历史阴影下的气候变化谈判

11160 Produced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper11160Climate change is a global challenge requiring unprece-dented levels of collective action. In this context, this paperasks: do appeals to historical responsibility facilitate orhinder collective action? This paper uses a simple lab exper-iment simulating climate mitigation bargaining betweenhigh- and low-income countries. A key design feature isthat the need for mitigation is triggered based on historicalactions that were undertaken without knowledge of theirimpact on the environment (and hence, the need for mitiga-tion). Two treatment arms were conducted, a baseline wherethe cause for mitigation (past actions) is not revealed, and atreatment—“the shadow of history”—where the historicalorigins of the problem are made explicit. In both condi-tions, negotiations take place regarding contributions to aThis paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa Region. It is part of a largereffort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussionsaround the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. Theauthors may be contacted at s.banuri@uea.ac.uk and esergenti@worldbank.org. mitigation fund (i.e., collective action). Results show thatrevealing the shadow of history marginally increases averagecontributions, but the distribution of those contributionschanges markedly. When made aware of the historical causesof the climate problem, low-income countries significantlyreduce their contributions, while high-income countriescontribute more—offsetting the reduction. Critically, theoverall welfare of low-income countries increases, while itdecreases for high-income countries. Moreover, results fromtextual analysis of chat data show greater tension whenhistorical responsibility is made explicit, with more nega-tive sentiment and adversarial conversations. These resultssuggest that appealing to historical responsibility appearsto be a successful negotiations tactic for poor countries. Climate Change Negotiations Under the Shadow of HistorySheheryar Banuri and Ernest J. Sergenti1Keywords: Climate Change Negotiations; Historical Responsibility; Collective Action;Bargaining; InequalityJEL codes: C91; D63; Q54; H87Banuri: School of Economics, University of East Anglia and Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge (e-mail:s.banuri@uea.ac.uk); Sergenti: World Bank (esergenti@worldbank.org). We thank many seminar participants at theUniversity of East Anglia, the World Bank, and at the annual conferences of the following organization: the MidwestPolitical Science Association (April 2024), the American Political Science Association (September 2024), and theEconomic Research Forum (April 2025), especially Robert Sugden, Colin Kuehl, Kevin Carey, Hala Abou Ali, RobertaGatti, and Nadir Mohammed. The authors have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the researchdescribed in this paper. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of theauthors and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they 1 represent. 1.IntroductionDoes the focus on debates about historical responsibility improve welfare outcomes forpoor countries? In recent years poor countries have pointed to the historical emissions of richcountries in contributing to climate change. At the same time, the need for global cooperationfor climate change mitigation is imminent. Hence, does the focus on responsibility andculpability in negotiations make it more difficult for countries to cooperate to mitigate climatechange? Furthermore, does this affect negotiations behavior? And finally, how does this focuson historical responsibility improve the welfare of poor countries? In this paper, we use a labexperiment that directly models issues of historical responsibility, and show that (1) includingdebates about historical responsibility has no impact on overall cooperation, (2) these debatesreduce cooperation by poor countries, but rich countries compensate for these reductions; (3)these debates negatively affect sentiments and make negotiations more adversari