This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

This paper discusses the political economy of the climate change debate. The objective is to come to a better understanding of why at international levels (e. g. the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm) climate change was one of the main topics at the agenda, despite the fact that climate change cannot...

Viewing individual contributions as investments in emission reduction we rely on the familiar linear public goods-game to set global reduction targets which, if missed, imply that all payoffs are destroyed with a certain probability. Regulation by milestones does not only impose a final...

This paper discusses aspects related to the green technology sector in Germany. In a ?rst step institutional reforms enabling diffusion of green technologies are analysed. Cost arguments are also taken into account. In a second step a theoretical model developed by Tanguay et al. (2004) is...

This study is about structural change in the energy system. In a first step an econometric model is presented and in a second step diffusion of GTs is embedded theoretically. By focusing on different green technology industries (GT sector) in Germany, we analyze how policy induced demand...

Without regulation or agreement, public goods are underprovided and public bads are overprovided. Both problems are usually seen as flip sides of the same coin. In this paper we examine a situation where a public good is good for some agents but bad for others, and this preference is endogenous...

Land subsidence threatens the living conditions of roughly 1.2 billion people worldwide in deltaic regions characterized by soft top soil. Economic activity in deltaic regions requires lowering the groundwater levels to keep the land sufficiently dry to maintain productivity, which, however,...

Previous work on the formation and stability of cartels has focused on the case of identical players. This assumption is very restrictive in many economic environments. This paper analyses stability of cartels in games with heterogeneous players and spillovers to non-members. I introduce a...