International Cooperation Behind the Veil of Uncertainty – The Case of Transboundary Acidification

Environmental & Resource Economics, 1998, vol. 12, issue 2, 185-201

Abstract: The complexities of international environmental problems are only poorly understood. Hence, decision makers have to negotiate about abatement measures even though they do not know the 'true' model of the ecological system and have only a rough idea about the costs and benefits of their action. It will be analysed to what extent this kind of 'model uncertainty' – where players do not only have incomplete information about the payoff functions of the other players, but also about their own payoff function – affects the prospects of international cooperation. Using a simple game-theoretic model, it is shown how countries can use the veil of uncertainty to hide their distributional interests. The arguments are based on a deviation from the common prior assumption, which seems particularly questionable in a setting comprising various countries with different cultural and scientific backgrounds. Finally the model will prove useful to quantitatively and qualitatively illustrate the central role of model uncertainty in the negotiations of the first Sulphur Protocol signed to combat transboundary acidification. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

Keywords: acid rain; international negotiations; model uncertainty; transboundary pollution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008215711692 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: International Cooperation Behind the Veil of Uncertainty - The Case of Transboundary Acidification (1998)
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:kap:enreec:v:12:y:1998:i:2:p:185-201

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/A:1008215711692

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().