Sharing R&D investments in cleaner technologies to mitigate climate change

This paper examines international cooperation on technological development as an alternative to international cooperation on GHG emission reductions. It is assumed that when countries cooperate they coordinate their investments so as to minimize the agreement costs of controlling emissions and that they also pool their R&D efforts so as to fully internalize the spillover effects of their investments in R&D. In order to analyze the scope of cooperation, an agreement formation game is solved in three stages. First, countries decide whether or not to sign the agreement. Then, in the second stage, signatories (playing together) and non-signatories (playing individually) select their investment …