Strategic Delegation and Non-cooperative International Permit Markets

We analyze a principal-agent relationship in the context of international climate policy in a two-country framework. First, the principals of both countries decide whether to link their domestic emission permit markets to an international market. Second, the principals select agents who then non-cooperatively determine the levels of emission permits. Finally, these permits are traded on domestic or international permit markets. We find that the principals in both countries have an incentive to select agents that care (weakly) less for environmental damages than the principals do themselves. This incentive is more pronounced under international permit markets, particularly for permit sellers, rendering an international market less beneficial to at least one country. Our results may explain why we do not observe international permit markets despite their seemingly favorable characteristics and, more generally, suggest that treating countries as atomistic players may be an oversimplifying assumption when analyzing strategic behavior in international policy making.