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International environmental agreements (IEAs) are treaties negotiated, signed, and ratified by individual nation-states to address environmental problems that trespass national borders. Because no supranational authority can force a sovereign state to join an IEA, any agreement must be self-enforcing, creating a tension between the collective benefits of cooperation and the private incentive to free-ride on the efforts of others.

In this presentation, we investigate how the nature and design of IEAs affect their effectiveness and attractiveness. We do so within a theoretical framework where countries can respond to climate change via both mitigation and adaptation. We discuss various IEA designs, including top-down and bottom-up approaches, as well as incentives used to secure participation and compliance, and compare them using models from various families proposed in the literature. (With Lucia Sbragia)