摘要：The Kyoto Protocol required individual countries to reach certain emission targets by 2012. The research question is: could misperceptions cause countries to choose policies that imply unnecessarily high abatement costs when trying to reach similar targets? The first hypothesis is that decision makers (voters and politicians) do not consider long lifetimes of equipment that emit CO2 and therefore ignore the benefits of early and natural replacements. In a closed economy laboratory experiment with economics students, T1, the author find postponed policies and costs exceeding benchmarks by 58 percent. Only 25 percent of the participants reach the target. The second hypothesis is that tradable quotas may not solve this problem. In a symmetric five-country treatment, T2, the author finds costs to be higher than in T1, while more participants reach the target. Unwarranted tax differences between symmetric countries motivate inefficient quota trade. The results point to a need for information policies and may be seen to favor uniform taxes over tradable quotas.
