This article explores four questions. First, what theoretical frameworks help describe policy failure and success? Second, how might the decision that leads to failure or success be understood in terms of differing concepts of rationality and decisionmaking? Third, how does the discussion of...

This paper studies the formation of international climate coalitions by heterogeneous countries. Countries rationally predict the consequences of their membership decisions in climate negotiations. We offer an approach to characterise the equilibrium number of coalitions and their number of...

This paper studies countries' incentives to develop advanced pollution abatement technology when technology may spillover across countries and pollution abatement is a global public good. We are motivated in part by the problem of global warming: a solution to this involves providing a global...

We propose a simple mechanism providing incentives to reduce harmful emissions to their efficient level without infracting upon productive efficiency. The mechanism employs a contest creating incentives among participating nations to simultaneously exert efficient productive and efficient...

We examine the formation of multilateral, hub-and-spoke and bilateral international R&D strategic alliances (overlapping climate clubs) to reduce CO2 emissions. R&D provision in clubs produces two types of positive externalities: a global public good (i.e., reduction of CO2 emissions) and...

This article proposes a way of introducing some organization and tractability in climate science, generating more widely credible evaluations of climate science, and imposing some discipline on the processing and interpretation of climate information. I propose a two-part policy instrument...

This paper studies countries' incentives to develop advanced pollution abatement technology when technology may spillover across countries and pollution abatement is a global public good. We are motivated in part by the problem of global warming: a solution to this involves providing a global...

This article analyzes the international emissions trading regime at the heart of the world's effort to address global warming as a means of exploring broader international governance issues. The trading regime seeks to marry two models of global governance, market liberalism, which embraces...

International climate protection investments (Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism projects) are burdened with problems of contract enforcement, which prevent the realisation of efficiency gains associated with these investments. The paper analyses this problem from the...

Seeking to play a pioneering role in climate protection, the European Union has decided to pursue a reduction of at least 20% in greenhouse-gas emissions (on 1990 levels) by the year 2020. Moreover, Europe has declared its willingness to commit itself to emission reductions of 30% over the same...