We study fairness and reciprocity in a Hawk-Dove game. This alllows us to testvarious models in one framework. We observe a large extent of selfish and rationalbehavior. Our results are inconsistent with leading models in this field.

The effects of stake size on cooperation and punishment are investigated using a public goods experiment. We find that an increase in stake size does neither significantly affect cooperation nor, interestingly, the level of punishment.

Explaining the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and the social sciences. Recent experimental evidence suggests that altruistic punishment is an important mechanism to maintain cooperation among humans. In this...

This paper analyses the outcome of non-cooperative national efforts in combatting global pollu-tion problems when governments are elected by their citizens. It is well-known that the latter tend to vote governments that are less 'green' than the median voter in order to commit to lower national...

According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, global collective action is needed to stabilize “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous [our emphasis] anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Framework Convention thus...

In this paper we analyze how rati cation uncertainty impacts the optimal terms of international environmental agreements (IEAs). We relax the frequent assumption of countries as unitary actors by modeling the rati cation stage through uncertain preferences of a ratifying agent (e.g. the pivotal...

Almost all international environmental agreements include a minimum participation rule. Under such a rule an agreement becomes legally binding if and only if a certain threshold in terms of membership or contribution is reached. We analyze a cartel game with open membership and heterogeneous...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

This paper examines the questions of who participates in the provision of a public good through the voluntary participation of agents in the presence of strong complementarity between a public good and a private good. We show that the greater the initial endowment of the private good that agents...

Following Barberà, Sonnenschein, and Zhou (1991, Econometrica 59, 595-609), we study rules (or social choice functions) through which agents select a subset from a set of objects. We investigate domains on which there exist nontrivial strategy-proof rules. We establish that the set of separable...