Calling upon both positive and normative economics, we attempt to characterise the issues at stake in the current international negotiations on climatic change. We begin (Section 2) by reviewing the main features of the Protocol. Then (Section 3), we identify by means of an elementary economic...

The paper proves the existence and uniqueness of a noncooperative steady state in the context of a model of climate change. It also explores the possibility of cooperation and attainment of an optimal steady state. It is shown that the problem is similar to that in the static model (Chander and...

When environmental externalities are international - i.e. transfrontier - they most often are multilateral and embody public good characteristics. Improving upon inefficient laissez-faire equilibria requires voluntary cooperation for which the game-theoretic core concept provides optimal...