The relationship between our general equilibrium model with multi- member households and club models with multiple private goods is investigated. The main distinction in the definitions consists of the equilibrium concepts. As a rule, competitive equilibria among households where no group of...

Global public goods pose great risks, especially when the lack of these goods may have devastating consequences. Climate protection is such a good and it faces a triple dilemma: the so-called Westphalian dilemma of sovereign nation states, a weakest-link dilemma as the success of climate...

Climate clubs, namely subgroups of countries implementing more ambitious and effective climate policies than others, may be the only practical approach to address the lack of incentives to reduce GHG emissions on the part of most, if not all, countries. In climate clubs, incentives to undertake...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established numerous voluntary environmental programs over the last fifteen years, seeking to encourage businesses to make environmental progress beyond what current law requires them to achieve. EPA aims to induce beyond-compliance behavior by...

Voluntary environmental programs (VEP) are institutions that encourage participating actors to produce environmental public goods beyond the requirements of government law. Drawing on the club approach to the study of VEPs, we identify four collective action challenges facing VEPs. First,...

A two-tier climate club exploits the comparative advantage of large countries to mete out punishments through trade, while taking their capacity to resist punishment as a constraint. Countries outside the coalition price carbon at a fixed fraction of the average carbon price adopted within the...