Focusing climate negotiations on a uniform common commitment can promote cooperation

Climate change and other threats to modern societies require international cooperation.  Utilizing a laboratory experiment and game theoretical analysis, we find that the success of negotiations to promote cooperation strongly depends on the kind of commitment negotiated. In the context of international climate policy, our findings indicate that individual commitments (as negotiated in the Paris Agreement) and complex common commitments (as negotiated in the Kyoto Protocol) tend to have only limited success in promoting cooperation. Shifting the negotiation focus to a uniform common commitment, such as a minimum carbon price, may potentially foster more ambitious cooperation and thus help mitigating climate change.

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Prof. Dr. Klaus M. Schmidt
Seminar for Economic Theory
LMU Munich
Email: klaus.schmidt@lmu.de