In the previous blog post, the question of how much a country can make a commitment was discussed. An issue of interest is how much a Party can commit to increase their emission reduction if certain conditions are met. This is of interest because many mechanisms for providing public goods are based on players matching each others commitments in some sense.
One of the most interesting papers on matching commitments is
Boadway, R., Song, Z., Tremblay, J.-F., 2009, The Efficiency of Voluntary Pollution Abatement when Countries can Commit, Queen’s Economics Department Working Paper No. 1205.
They investigate a process where countries can choose a ‘matching rate’ at which they will increase their abatement based on other countries’ abatement. This process is a game whose solution (a subgame perfect equilibrium) is also a socially optimal outcome. This requires whether countries can commit to their matching rates.
This is why it is interesting whether a pledge announced at a climate meeting (and possibly included in a UNFCCC text) is a strong commitment or not. In the Kyoto process, the pledge and review process is repeated, which means that if a player goes back on a commitment, they could face consequences later.
February 4, 2010 at 9:47 pm
[...] It is useful to have a ’schedule’ (such as the chapeau of the accord) in which as many emitters as possible list their targets and commitments. It is also useful to have conditional targets (along with conditions) placed into this schedule. If countries are able to commit to both conditional and unconditional targets, then we have a framework that could lead to countries choosing their targets cooperatively. This has been strongly suggested by research on mechanisms that implement public goods. [...]
December 16, 2010 at 2:40 pm
[...] have game theoretic solution concepts that could lead to more cooperation on climate change, such mechanisms ought to be given serious [...]