Challenging conventional wisdom: Experimental evidence on heterogeneity and coordination in avoiding a collective catastrophic event

Israel Waichman (), Tilman Requate, Markus Karde and Manfred Milinski

No 19, KCG Working Papers from Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG)

Abstract: Avoiding a catastrophic climate change event is a global public good characterized by several dimensions, notably heterogeneity between the parties involved. It is often argued that such heterogeneity between countries is a major obstacle to cooperative climate policy. We challenge this belief by experimentally simulating two important heterogeneities, in wealth and loss, when dangerous climate change occurs. We find that under loss heterogeneity the success rate in achieving sufficient mitigation to prevent catastrophic climate change is higher than with homogeneous parties. We also observe that neither endowment heterogeneity nor the combination of endowment and loss heterogeneities lead to significantly different success rates than with homogeneous parties. Our findings suggest that heterogeneities may facilitate rather than hinder successful international climate policy negotiations.

Keywords: global public good; change negotiation; collective-risk social dilemma; endowmentheterogeneity; loss heterogeneity; focal point (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D74 H41 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-env and nep-exp
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/205134/1/1679966839.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Challenging conventional wisdom: Experimental evidence on heterogeneity and coordination in avoiding a collective catastrophic event (2021)
Working Paper: Challenging conventional wisdom: Experimental evidence on heterogeneity and coordination in avoiding a collective catastrophic event (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:kcgwps:19

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