Carbon is Forever: A Climate Change Experiment on Cooperation
Quaderni - Working Paper DSE N° 1065
53 Pages Posted: 6 May 2016
Date Written: May 3, 2016
Abstract
Greenhouse gases generate impacts that can last longer than human civilization itself. Such persistence may affect the behavioral ability to cooperate. Here we study mitigation efforts within a framework that reflects key features of climate change and then contrasts a dynamic versus a static setting. In a treatment with persistence, the pollution cumulates and generates damages over time while in another treatment it has only immediate effects and then disappears. We find that cooperation is not hampered, on average, by pollution persistence. Mitigation efforts, though, should not be delayed, because cooperation levels appear to deteriorate for high stocks of pollution.
Keywords: Myopia, Stock externalities, Social dilemma, Inequality
JEL Classification: C70, C90, D03, Q54
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation