A Fair Share: Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China

Fredrik Carlsson, Mitesh Kataria (), Alan Krupnick (), Elina Lampi, Åsa Löfgren, Ping Qin (), Thomas Sterner and Susie Chung ()
Additional contact information
Alan Krupnick: Resources for the Future, Postal: 1616 P St., NW, Washington, DC, 20036, USA
Ping Qin: Peking University, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Postal: 100871 Beijing, China
Susie Chung: Resources for the Future, Postal: 1616 P St., NW, Washington, DC, 20036, USA

No 471, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using a choice experiment, we investigated preferences for distributing the economic burden of decreasing CO2 emissions in the two largest CO2-emitting countries: the United States and China. We asked respondents about their preferences for four burden-sharing rules to reduce CO2 emissions according to their country’s 1) historical emissions, 2) income level, 3) equal right to emit per person, and 4) current emissions. We found that U.S. respondents preferred the rule based on current emissions, while the equal right to emit rule was clearly least preferred. The Chinese respondents, on the other hand, preferred the historical rule, while the current emissions rule was the least preferred. Respondents overall favored the rule that was least costly for their country. These marked differences may explain the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to share costs, presenting a tough hurdle to overcome in future negotiations. We also found that the strength of the preferences was much stronger in China, suggesting that how mitigation costs are shared across countries is more important there.

Keywords: Climate; burden-sharing; fairness; China; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q51 Q52 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2010-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Published as Carlsson, Fredrik, Mitesh Kataria, Alan Krupnick, Elina Lampi, Åsa Löfgren, Ping Qin, Thomas Sterner and Susie Chung, 'A Fair Share : Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China' in Resource and Energy Economics, 2013, pages 1-17.

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Related works:
Journal Article: A fair share: Burden-sharing preferences in the United States and China (2013)
Working Paper: A Fair Share - Burden-Sharing Preferences in the United States and China (2010)
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