Consider a situation in which countries anticipate an international environmental agreement (IEA) to be in effect sometime in the future. What is the impact of the future IEA on current emissions after its announcement? We show that the answer to this question is ambiguous. We examine four types...

This paper studies how sulfur protocols trigger invention and diffusion of technologies for reducing SO2 emissions. For this goal we constructed a patent data set on SO2 abatement technologies filed in 15 signatory and non-signatory countries in the period 1970-1997. Our data enable us to study...