Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Technology, Unilateral Commitments And Cumulative Emissions Reduction, Shurojit Chatterji, Sayantan Ghosal

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this article, we argue that weak property rights over transnational pollution and the limited threat of retaliatory punishments blunts the effectiveness of a broad-based multilateral agreement to deliver the emission reductions required to mitigate climate change. Instead, we propose a policy framework that builds on unilateral commitments, endogenous innovation and technology transfer that could lead to cumulative emissions reduction by altering the participation constraints of nations over time.