• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.827-858
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• 2006

The paper presents game theoretic models for self-enforcing coalition formation in order to sustain effective international environmental agreements(IEAs). The model analyzes how the intrinsically strategic nature of a government's environmental policies(the emission allowance standard) calls for rules to sustain an IEA. Focusing on the recent theoretical developments in the infinitely repeated game, the paper introduces some mechanisms to show how self-interested sovereign countries are cooperatively able to maintain an IEA rather than defect to initially profit at the expense of a pollution heaven later on. For a more realistic case needed to sustain an IEA, an optimal international environmental policy with both signatories and non-signatories under imperfect monitoring is also explored. In this extension of the model, the derivation process for a critical discount factor, a trigger price level and the length of punishment period is briefly discussed.