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An Evolutionary approach to International Environmental Agreements

Author

Listed:
  • Tiziano Distefano

    (Department of Environmental, Land and Infrastructure Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy)

  • Simone D'Alessandro

    (Department of Economics and Management, Università di Pisa, Italy)

Abstract

Our work contributes to explain the observation of two facts at odds: the number of signatories of international environmental agreements (IEA) has grown in time, meanwhile, the aggregate global level of greenhouse gas emissions is increasing at exponential rate. We introduce a novel multi-scale framework, composed by two tied games, to show under which conditions a country is able to fulfill the IEA: an Evolutionary Game which describes the economic structure through the interaction of households and rms' strategies; and a 2x2 one-shot Game, with asymmetric nations that negotiate on the maximum share of emissions. The distance between international environmental targets and country's emissions performances is explained in terms of heterogeneous economic structure, without the need to impose any free-riding behaviour. Consumer's environmental consciousness (micro level) together with global income (and technological) inequality (macro level), are found to be the key variables towards the green transition path. We provide analytical results paired with numerical simulations.

Suggested Citation

  • Tiziano Distefano & Simone D'Alessandro, 2017. "An Evolutionary approach to International Environmental Agreements," SEEDS Working Papers 0517, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Sep 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:srt:wpaper:0517
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    Cited by:

    1. Giorgos Stamatopoulos, 2021. "On the core of economies with multilateral environmental externalities," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(1), pages 158-171, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    International environmental agreements; asymmetry; evolutionary process; Multi-level perspective; climate change;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • Q20 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - General

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