The issue of US ratification of international environmental treaties is a recurring obstacle for environmental multilateralism, including the climate regime. Despite the perceived importance of the role of the US to the success of any future international climate agreement, there has been little...

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties have important implications for both the effectiveness and the efficiency of future climate policies. Among these implications, those related with technical change and...

This paper investigates the implications of U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, and the distribution of compliance costs for remaining Annex-B countries taking into consideration the monopoly power by the Former Soviet Union (FSU) on...

Despite the US rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the meeting of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in July 2001 has increased the likelihood that the Protocol will be ratified. This raises a number of issues concerning mitigation costs, particularly for the buyers and...

As we enter the compliance years of the Kyoto Protocol, the world waits to see whether the first global effort at combating climate change will be deemed a success or failure. While there may be no clear answer to that question, an analysis of various nations’ efforts at compliance reveals a...

We show that U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol is straightforward under political economy considerations. The reason is that U.S. compliance costs exceed low willingness to pay for dealing with global warming in the U.S. The withdrawal had a crucial impact on the concretion of the Protocol...