Leadership and Climate Policy

Torben Mideksa

No 9054, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper examines leadership in relation to supplying a global public good. Both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement encourage the developed countries to take a lead in reducing emissions. Does a country benefit from taking a lead? When does leadership improve global welfare? The answer depends on how transparent the leader’s abatement technology is for the followers. When there is no transparency and the leader has to abate to signal the abatement cost, leadership reduces global welfare unless the crowding-out effect is weak. If there is transparency and the follower can benefit from technology spillover effects, leadership reduces global welfare unless the spillover effect is sufficiently large. I find that transparency reduces global welfare unless the spillover effect is sufficiently large and the difference in abatement cost is small. This theory can rationalize the European Union’s stance on climate policy while also explaining the perceived failure of the Kyoto Protocol.

Keywords: global public goods; international relations; leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D81 F50 H21 Q38 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9054.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9054

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().