IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-04q20003.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Potential Failure of an International Environmental Agreement under Asymmetric Information

Author

Listed:
  • Norimichi Matsueda

    (Kwansei Gakuin University)

Abstract

The free-riding issue is generally considered to be the biggest obstacle in the success of an international environmental agreement. Even without free-riding incentives, however, asymmetric information can pose a potentially significant threat in establishing a cooperative relationship. In this note, we examine perfect Bayesian equilibria of a simple signaling game between a polluter country and a victim country over an agreement to mitigate unidirectional transboudary pollution. We show that the stalemate in addressing an international environmental issue can be explained partly by the incentive conflict due to asymmetric information on the environmental preference of a polluter. We also identify several conditions that allow such a stalemate to occur more easily.

Suggested Citation

  • Norimichi Matsueda, 2004. "Potential Failure of an International Environmental Agreement under Asymmetric Information," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 17(4), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-04q20003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2004/Volume17/EB-04Q20003A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, April.
    2. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249.
    3. Fanny Missfeldt, 1999. "Game‐Theoretic Modelling of Transboundary Pollution," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 287-321, July.
    4. Kennan, John & Wilson, Robert, 1993. "Bargaining with Private Information," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 45-104, March.
    5. Claus Huber & Franz Wirl, 1996. "Optimal incentives to reduce transboundary emissions: Theory and empirical illustration to sulphur emissions in Austria and (former) Czechoslovakia," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 149-172, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Jakob & Kai Lessmann, 2012. "Signaling in international environmental agreements: the case of early and delayed action," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 309-325, November.
    2. Fuhai Hong, 2014. "Technology transfer with transboundary pollution: A signalling approach," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 953-980, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eso, Peter & Wallace, Chris, 2016. "Persuasion and Pricing : Dynamic Trading with Hard Evidence," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 24, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    2. Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2015. "Time Preferences and Bargaining," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series /2015/568, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    3. Lopomo, Giuseppe & Ok, Efe A, 2001. "Bargaining, Interdependence, and the Rationality of Fair Division," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 263-283, Summer.
    4. Christopher Tyson, 2010. "Dominance solvability of dynamic bargaining games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(3), pages 457-477, June.
    5. Norimichi Matsueda, 2002. "Asymmetrical information and delay of a side payment in unidirectional transboundary pollution," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 5(3), pages 229-247, September.
    6. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:17:y:2004:i:4:p:1-8 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Zhou, J., 2010. "Access to justice : An economic approach," Other publications TiSEM 9d70f451-35c4-4878-92bf-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Landeo, Claudia & Nikitin, Maxim & Izmalkov, Sergei, 2012. "Playing against an Apparent Opponent: Incentives for Care, Litigation, and Damage Caps under Self-Serving Bias," Working Papers 2012-15, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2012.
    9. Iain M. Fraser, 1995. "An Analysis Of Management Agreement Bargaining Under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 20-32, January.
    10. Ruiz-Verdu, Pablo, 2007. "The economics of union organization: Efficiency, information and profitability," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 848-868, October.
    11. Spencer, Michael Andrew, 1995. "Structured and unstructured bargaining with positive transaction costs: an experimental investigation," ISU General Staff Papers 1995010108000018183, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Fiona Scott Morton & Jorge Silva-Risso & Florian Zettelmeyer, 2011. "What matters in a price negotiation: Evidence from the U.S. auto retailing industry," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 365-402, December.
    13. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    14. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Salant, Stephen W., 2011. "A free lunch in the commons," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 245-253, May.
    15. Frans P. Vries & Nick Hanley, 2016. "Incentive-Based Policy Design for Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation: A Review," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 687-702, April.
    16. Yu-Bong Lai, 2004. "Trade liberalization, consumption externalities and the environment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 17(5), pages 1-9.
    17. Kessing, Sebastian G. & Konrad, Kai A. & Kotsogiannis, Christos, 2006. "Federal tax autonomy and the limits of cooperation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 317-329, March.
    18. Ni, Jinlan & Wei, Chu & Du, Limin, 2015. "Revealing the political decision toward Chinese carbon abatement: Based on equity and efficiency criteria," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 609-621.
    19. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Deffains, 2007. "Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(4), pages 627-656, December.
    20. Sandy Fréret & Denis Maguain, 2017. "The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(6), pages 1100-1140, December.
    21. , & ,, 2015. "A folk theorem for stochastic games with infrequent state changes," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(1), January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    asymmetric information;

    JEL classification:

    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-04q20003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.