Transitions in the negotiations on climate change: from prisoner’s dilemma to chicken and beyond

Original Paper
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Abstract

Frequently, international environmental negotiations have been analyzed in two-agent (2 × 2) games. Yet, in order to involve additional strategies, (3 × 3) games gained attention recently. We employ such a (3 × 3) game setting in order to depict international negotiations on climate change and integrate both the prisoner’s dilemma and the chicken games in this setting. We analyze transitions of negotiation states and describe how ancillary benefits and first-mover advantages influence agents’ behavior in the negotiations, when three different strategies or levels of climate protection efforts are available. Finally, we also integrate strategies to mitigate and to adapt to climate change into the analysis in the (3 × 3) game setting.

Keywords

2-Person games Adaptation Ancillary benefits Climate change First-mover advantage International negotiations Chicken game Prisoner’s dilemma game 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.CER-ETH, Center of Economic Research at ETH ZurichZurichSwitzerland
  2. 2.Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)BilbaoSpain
  3. 3.IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for ScienceBilbaoSpain
  4. 4.Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO)OsloNorway

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