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Environmental cooperation: ratifying second-best agreements

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An Erratum to this article was published on 07 February 2012

Abstract

As an alternative to the environmental cartel approach, we assume that an international environmental agreement aims simply at providing a collective response to a perceived threat. Given this less demanding concept of cooperation and considering that most treaties become enforceable only after ratification by a sufficient number of participants, we examine the set of self-enforceable agreements. This set contains first-best but also second-best agreements that do not maximize the collective welfare of members but meet environmental and/or participative requirements. We study the properties of this set and discuss admissible values of targets and thresholds that favour economics over environmental objectives and vice versa.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Economics, INRA, Montpellier, France

    Pierre Courtois

  2. Dept. of Economics, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    Guillaume Haeringer

Authors
  1. Pierre Courtois
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  2. Guillaume Haeringer
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Correspondence to Pierre Courtois.

Additional information

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-012-9918-z.

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Courtois, P., Haeringer, G. Environmental cooperation: ratifying second-best agreements. Public Choice 151, 565–584 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9759-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9759-6

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