Löfgren, Åsa, Martine Visser and Reviva Hasson. 2009. “Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation.” EfD Discussion Paper 09.
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The authors studied the potential tradeoff between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation to climate change. Mitigating greenhouse gases may be a public good, but adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or individual.
They used a one-shot public-goods game with a stochastic term to account for probabilistic destruction, mapping the probability density function to within-group levels of mitigation, and compared low- and high-vulnerability treatments by varying the magnitude of disaster. Results showed no significant difference in mitigation level and emphasized the role of trust in enhancing cooperation.
Löfgren, Åsa 
Visser, Martine 
Hasson, Reviva - EEU-Sweden
- South Africa