For sufficiently low abatement costs many countries might undertake significant emission reductions even without any international agreement on emission reductions. We consider a situation where a coalition of countries does not cooperate on emission reductions but cooperates on the development...

Tipping of a natural system, entailing a loss of ecosystem services, may be prevented by stable partial cooperation. The presence of tipping points reverses the grim story that a high level of cooperation is hard to achieve and leaves large possible gains of cooperation. We investigate a tipping...

We develop a simple model of managing a system subject to pollution damage under risk of an abrupt and random jump in the damage coefficient. The model allows the full dynamic characterization of the optimal emission policies under uncertainty. The results, that imply prudent behavior due to...

In a recent paper, Barrett (2006) reaches the conclusion that in general the answer to the question in the title is no. We show in this paper that a focus on the R&D phase in the development of breakthrough technologies changes the picture. The stability of international treaties improves and...

We consider a duopolistic industry in which pollution is a by-product of production and firms are given emission permits that they can trade. The common wisdom is that allowing for trade in emission permits promotes efficiency. We demonstrate that this common wisdom cannot automatically be...

This paper considers self-enforcing international environmental agreements when countries are asymmetric with respect to emission-related benefits and environmental damage. Considering these asymmetries simultaneously yields large stable coalitions, also without the option of transfers between...

In terms of the number of signatories, one observes both large and small international environmental agreements. The theoretical literature, based on game theory, discusses different concepts and mechanisms regarding stability of coalitions. The conclusion has been reached that in all...