The case of two self-enforcing international agreements for environmental protection

Abstract Non-cooperative game theoretical models of self-enforcing international environmental agreements (IEAs) that employ the cartel stability concept of d'Aspremont et al. (1983) frequently use the assumption that countries can sign a single agreement only. We modify the assumption by considering two self-enforcing IEAs. Extending a model of Barrett (1994a) on a single self-enforcing IEA, we demonstrate that there are many similarities between one and two self-enforcing IEAs. But in the case of few countries and high environmental damage we show that two self-enforcing IEA work far better than one self-enforcing IEA in terms of both welfare and environmental equalityKeywords: self-enforcing international environmental agreements; non-cooperative game the- ory; stability; nonlinear optimization