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Tipping Points and Loss Aversion in International Environmental Agreements

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  • Doruk Iris

    (Department of Economics, Sogang University, Seoul)

  • Alessandro Tavoni

    (London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment)

Abstract

We study the impact of loss-aversion and the threat of catastrophic damages, which we jointly call threshold concerns, on international environmental agreements. We aim to understand whether a threshold for dangerous climate change is as an effective coordination device for countries to overcome the global free-riding problem and abate sufficiently to avoid disaster. We focus on loss-averse countries negotiating either under the threat of either high environmental damages (loss domain), or low damages (gain domain). Under symmetry, that is when countries display identical degrees of threshold concern, we show that such beliefs have a positive effect on reducing the emission levels of both signatories to the treaty and non-signatories, leading to higher global welfare and weakly larger coalitions of signatories. We then introduce asymmetry, by allowing countries to differ in the degree of concern about the threat of disaster. We show that stable coalitions are mostly formed by the countries with higher threshold concern. When enough countries having no threshold concern could cause the coalition size to diminish, regardless of the other countries have strong or mild threshold concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Doruk Iris & Alessandro Tavoni, 2016. "Tipping Points and Loss Aversion in International Environmental Agreements," Working Papers 1603, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
  • Handle: RePEc:sgo:wpaper:1603
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    Cited by:

    1. Nyborg, Karine, 2018. "Reciprocal climate negotiators," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 707-725.
    2. Johannes Emmerling & Ulrike Kornek & Valentina Bosetti & Kai Lessmann, 2021. "Climate thresholds and heterogeneous regions: Implications for coalition formation," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 293-316, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D0 - Microeconomics - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

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