We examine in this paper the formation and the stability of international environmental agreements when cooperation means to commit to a minimum abatement level. Each country decides whether to ratify the agreement and this latter enters into force only if it is ratified by a number of countries at least equal to some ratification threshold. We analyze the role played by ratification threshold ...

When a fish stock shifts from one nation to another nation, e.g. due to climate change, the nation that loses the resource has incentives to deplete it while the other nation, receiving the resource, has incentives to conserve it. We propose an analytical model to study under which circumstances self-enforcing agreements can align incentives. Our setup allows to distinguish between a fast and a...

A proposed international agreement on antibiotic resistance will depend on robust accountability mechanisms for real-world impact. This article examines the central aspects of accountability relationships in international agreements and lays out ways to strengthen them. We provide a menu of accountability mechanisms that facilitate transparency, oversight, complaint, and enforcement, describe h...

In this paper, we first describe the characteristics of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that are the basis of the framework of the multilateral trading system. We then provide an overview of concepts of fairness in trade agreements. Thereafter, we offer a critique of the efficiency criterion in assessing multilateral trade agreements, taking issue with T.N. Srinivasan’s (2006) analysis and t...

The ultimate litmus test of compliance theories occurs in situations where states’ interests are directly opposed, such as competing interstate claims over territory, maritime areas, and cross-border rivers. This article considers the extent to which the involvement of international institutions in the settlement of contentious issues between states bolsters compliance with agreements that are ...

We study coalition formation and the strategic timing of membership of an IEA for environmental issues in the Coalitional Bargaining Game (CBG) of Gomes (2005, Econometrica). For the general CBG, we derive the necessary and sufficient condition for immediate formation of the grand coalition. We apply the CBG to a river sharing problem with two symmetric upstream agents and one downstream agent....