Ralph Winkler

The Political Economy of International Environmental Policy

International environmental policy is often seen as strategic interactions between sover-eign countries. In reality, however, international environmental policy is a hierarchical process. Each country has a multitude of agents who differ in many aspects, for example, how they are affected by climatic change, how they evaluate scientific uncertainties with respect to climatic change and in the extent to which they benefit from fossil fuel based technologies. As a consequence, different actors prefer different environmental policies both on a domestic and international level. These actors engage in a domestic political contest (e.g., the election of a government). However, the winner of this domestic political competition will not only decide on domestic policies but is also responsible for the negotiation of international environmental policies. A few recent papers explicitly show that the hierarchical structure of international climate policy has relevant effects for the formation of international climate policies, which have to be taken into account in order to adequately assess their effectiveness. In Ralph Winkler's research project, he plans to extend this line of research for different kind of domestic political competition (e.g., influence of interest groups, strategic voting, etc.) and various international environmental policies (e.g., formation of international permit markets, coalition formation games, etc.).

Ralph Winkler is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and the Oeschge Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich (CER-ETH), Switzerland, at the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment (SPIRE), Keele University and at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Economics, University of Heidelberg. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Economics, University of Heidelberg. He also has an MA in Economics (Diplom-Volkswirt) and an MS in Physics (Diplom-Physiker). His Abitur is from the Gymnasium Puchheim. Ralph Winkler is a Fellow in the CESifo Research Network.