Fuhai Hong

International Environmental Agreements with Endogenous or Exogenous Risk

We examine the effect of endogenous and exogenous risk on the equilibrium (expected) membership of an International Environmental Agreement when countries are risk averse. Endogenous risk arises when countries use mixed rather than pure strategies at the participation game, and exogenous risk arises from the inherent uncertainty about the costs and benefits of increased abatement. Under endogenous risk, an increase in risk aversion increases expected participation. Under exogenous risk and pure strategies, increased risk aversion weakly decreases equilibrium participation if and only if the variance of income decreases with abatement.

Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements

It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.

Sunk Cost As a Self-Management Device

The sunk cost effect has been widely observed in individual decisions. Building on an intra-personal self-management game, the paper theoretically shows that the sunk cost effect may stem from an attempt to overcome the under-investment problem associated with a high degree of present bias or to resolve the multi-selves coordination problem when the degree of present bias is low. Especially for individuals with severe present bias, the current self may take a costly action (which is a sunk cost for the future self) to signal the individuals high ability that motivates his future self-disciplining behaviors. In equilibrium, a higher level of sunk cost is more likely to give rise to a higher probability for the individual to continue the project. We then conduct a laboratory experiment. The empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical implications.

TESTING THE THEORY OF MULTITASKING: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL FIELD EXPERIMENT IN CHINESE FACTORIES: TESTING THE THEORY OF MULTITASKING

A well-recognized problem in the multitasking literature is that workers might substantially reduce their effort on tasks that produce unobservable outputs as they seek the salient rewards to observable outputs. Since the theory related to multitasking is decades ahead of the empirical evidence, the economic costs of standard incentive schemes under multitasking contexts remain largely unknown. This study provides empirical insights quantifying such effects using a field experiment in Chinese factories. Using more than 2200 data points across 126 workers, we find sharp evidence that workers do trade off the incented output (quantity) at the expense of the non-incented one (quality) as a result of a piece rate bonus scheme. Consistent with our theoretical model, treatment effects are much stronger for workers whose base salary structure is a flat wage compared to those under a piece rate base salary. While the incentives result in a large increase in quantity and a sharp decrease in quality for workers under a flat base salary, they result only in a small increase in quantity without affecting quality for workers under a piece rate base salary.

Can a Nonbinding Climate Treaty Work? Evidence of Asymmetric Effects on Developed and Developing Countries from FCCC

Before 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol went into force, the Framework Convention of Climate Change (FCCC) did not impose any binding restrictions on carbon emissions of member countries. Many argue that such a treaty would not reduce carbon emissions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of FCCC membership on a country’s carbon emissions during the period 1990–2004. We find a positive and significant effect of FCCC membership on the control of carbon emissions in Annex I (industrialized) countries. FCCC membership seems to have reduced carbon emissions in Annex I countries by changing the structure of energy use (reducing the percentage of fossil fuels) rather than changing the amount of energy use. Al-though a number of non-Annex I countries joined the FCCC, FCCC membership had no significant impact on their carbon emissions. This fact can be explained by the tradeoff in coalition formation between attracting more members and increasing the provision of public goods from individual players.