Conserve or Else! Outside Options and International Conservation Agreements

• In Event: Modeling Institutions

Abstract

When can international legal protections promote environmental conservation? To answer this question, we study a formal model in which there is a resource owner who owns many units of a good that they can gradually consume and a foreign conservationist. Specifically, we examine when the conservationist will prefer to reach an agreement and pay the resource owner not to consume and when they will prefer to exercise an outside option and turn to a court that may order the resource owner to cease consumption of the good. Our results indicate that courts can be detrimental to conservation at moderate levels of legal protection because they offer the conservationist a cheaper but riskier alternative to paying the resource owner. We illustrate our results by examining patterns in international whaling and the legal case against Japan at the International Court of Justice.

Authors

• Kristopher W. Ramsay, Princeton University

• Noam Reich, NYU Abu Dhabi