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...

This paper examines self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) in an open economy environment. Using an extended model of Barrett (1994), we show that: (i) equilibrium tariff is positive; (ii) the endogenously determined size and the effectiveness of an multilateral IEA are the...

I discuss the contributions that rigorous economic analysis can make in improving our understanding of international environmental agreements (IEAs). Specifically, I do this by analyzing the intellectual contributions of 14 post-1990 theoretical and empirical papers about the design of IEAs

We study the United Nations Organization's Kyoto Protocol nations to address two questions. First of all, what are the environmental production efficiency rankings of these nations? Secondly, is there a relationship between a nation's ratification status and its environmental production...

In this paper a two-stage game of international environmental agreement formation with asymmetric countries is solved. The equilibrium of the game allows to determine the number of countries interested in signing the agreement. Two cases are studied. In the first case, it is assumed that the...

There has been a recent economic literature arguing that international environmental agreements (IEAs) can have no real effect, on account of their voluntary and self-enforcing nature. This literature concludes that the terms of IEAs are the codification of the noncooperative equilibrium, and...

I describe the theoretical and empirical contributions that rigorous economic analysis can make in improving our understanding of the causes of and the solutions to a variety of international environmental problems. I do this by analyzing and summarizing the intellectual contributions of...