International environmental agreements require negotiation and cooperation among countries. This paper attempts to analyze the presence and nature of inter-country interactions in the process of ratifying such agreements. We develop a theoretical argument based on the notions of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity and study the interactions among three different peer types: geographic neighbors, trading partners and green investment projects partners (in our case, clean development mechanism projects partners). We test for the presence of interactions by taking into account a temporal dimension, which constitutes a methodological contribution. To this end, we introduce spatially lagged endogenous variables into a parametric survival model and apply the proposed framework to the Kyoto Protocol ratification process. Our data sample covers 164 countries for the period 1998 to 2009. We find evidence that, while countries’ ratification decisions are basically strategic substitutes, they become strategic complements once we focus on the ratification decisions of specific peers
As European countries move towards steeper cuts in greenhouse gases emissions, questions are mounting, in the forest sector, about the best balance between policies that favor carbon sequestration in biomass, and policies that favor fossil-fuel substitution, with potentially conflicting implications for forest management. We provide insights on this debate by comparing the environmental and economic implications for the French forest sector of a "stock" policy (payment for sequestration in situ), a "substitution" policy (subsidy to fuelwood consumption), and a combination thereof - all calibrated on the same price of carbon. To do so, we use the French Forest Sector Model (FFSM), which combines a dynamic model of French timber resource and a dynamic partial-equilibrium model of the French forest sector. Simulations over the 2010-2020 period show that the stock policy is the only one that performs better than business-as-usual in terms of carbon. In the substitution policy, cumulative substitution benefits are not sufficient to offset carbon losses in standing forests over this biologically short, but politically relevant period of time. And the combination policy does not perform better. However, the stock policy has negative impacts on consumers welfare, its costs are increasing over time as carbon is accumulated, and it raises political economy questions about the negotiability of the reference against which excess carbon is measured
Nearly all Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) offer stable annual payments over the duration of the contract. Yet AES are often intended to be a transition tool, designed to trigger changes in farming practices rather than to support them indefinitely. A decreasing sequence of payments thus appears particularly attractive as a reward structure for AES. The standard discounted utility model supports this notion by predicting that individuals should prefer a decreasing sequence of payments if the total sum of outcomes is constant. Nevertheless, the literature shows that numerous mechanisms, such as increasing productivity, anticipatory pleasure, and loss aversion, can, by contrast, incline individuals to favor an increasing sequence of payments. To understand the preferences of farmers for different payment sequences, we propose a review of the mechanisms highlighted by the literature in psychology and economics. We then test farmers' preferences for stable, increasing or decreasing payments through a choice experiment (CE) survey. In this survey, farmers are offered hypothetical contracts rewarding the planting of cover crops. To reduce hypothetical bias, the choice cards were designed following repeated interactions with local stakeholders. One hundred twenty-three French farmers, about 15% of those contacted, responded to the survey. Overall, farmers do not present a clear willingness to depart from the usual stable payments. Nevertheless, 17% declare a preference for increasing sequences of payment. Moreover, we find a significant rejection of decreasing payments by farmers with a lower discount rate or farmers more willing to take risks than the median farmer, contradicting the discounted utility model.
Is there a strategically beneficial time for political leaders to make international environmental commitments? Based on the political cycles theory, we argue that leaders have incentives to delay costly ratification of international environmental agreements to the post-electoral period. However, the cost of participating in these agreements is often lower for developing countries, and they may enjoy indirect advantages, which may make them more prone to ratifying in the pre-electoral period. These hypotheses are assessed empirically by studying the ratification process of 41 global environmental agreements censused in the Environmental Treaties and Resources Indicators' database from 1976 to 1999. We use a duration model in which time is measured on a daily basis, enabling us to precisely identify pre- and post-electoral periods-a significant challenge in political cycles studies. Our investigation reveals the existence of political ratification cycles that are of substantial magnitude and non-linear over the pre- and post-electoral years
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