International environmental protection like the combat of global warming exhibits properties of public goods. In the international arena, no coercive authority exists that can enforce measures to overcome free-rider incentives. Therefore decentralized negotiations between individual regions...

type="main" xml:id="ecca12074-abs-0001" <p>Experience from climate policy suggests that full cooperation among all countries is not a likely outcome. In this paper we therefore consider the case where only members of a subgroup of countries cooperate by reciprocally matching their public good...</p>

Discounting future utilities is often justified by the ethically motivated objective of protecting earlier generations from the excessive saving that seems to be implied by undiscounted utilitarianism in productive economies. We question this justification of discounting by showing that...