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Carbon is forever: A climate change experiment on cooperation

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  • Calzolari, Giacomo
  • Casari, Marco
  • Ghidoni, Riccardo

Abstract

Greenhouse gases generate impacts that can last longer than human civilization itself. Such persistence may affect the behavioral ability to cooperate. In a laboratory experiment, we study mitigation efforts with dynamic externalities in a framework that reflects key features of climate change. In treatments with persistence, pollution cumulates and generates damages over time, while in another treatment it has only immediate effects and then disappears. We show that with pollution persistence, cooperation is initially high but then systematically deteriorates with high stocks of pollution.

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  • Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco & Ghidoni, Riccardo, 2018. "Carbon is forever: A climate change experiment on cooperation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 169-184.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:169-184
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2018.09.002
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    3. Casari, Marco & Tavoni, Alessandro, 2024. "Climate clubs in the laboratory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
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    5. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco, 2017. "Climate change: Behavioral responses from extreme events and delayed damages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 103-115.
    6. Yu-Hsuan Lin, 2018. "How social preferences influence the stability of a climate coalition," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(2), pages 151-166.
    7. Filipe Duarte Santos & Tim O’Riordan & Miguel Rocha de Sousa & Jiesper Strandsbjerg Tristan Pedersen, 2023. "The Six Critical Determinants That May Act as Human Sustainability Boundaries on Climate Change Action," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-20, December.
    8. Roggenkamp, Hauke C., 2024. "Revisiting ‘Growth and Inequality in Public Good Provision’—Reproducing and Generalizing Through Inconvenient Online Experimentation," OSF Preprints 6rn97, Center for Open Science.
    9. Sanjit Dhami & Narges Hajimoladarvish & Pavan Mamidi, 2023. "Climate Change Risk, and Human Behavior: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10678, CESifo.
    10. Svetlana Pevnitskaya & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2022. "Strategy Adjustments in Games with a Dynamic Public Bad: Experimental Evidence," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 9(2), pages 173-184, June.
    11. Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A. & Polanski, Arnold, 2020. "Dirty neighbors — Pollution in an interlinked world," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stock externalities; Public goods; Inequality; Dynamic games;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

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