Decisions
Vol. 24
December 2015
Abstract
Mancur Olson offered us big thoughts on big subjects. Today, he might well attack the problem
of climate change and the current failure of nations to act effectively. Olson would note the
incentives of nations to ride free or cheaply. He would observe that climate change is an alliance
problem, one where some nations have much more at stake than others. With climate change,
the alliance problem is redoubled, since the asymmetries among nations fall along multiple
dimensions, including those of vulnerability to climate change, history of greenhouse emissions,
emissions per dollar of GNP, level of economic development, and cultural environmental
concerns. Each nation, valuing primarily its own concerns, advances principles favoring itself in
the apportionment of painful cuts. Not surprisingly, the cuts that nations have agreed upon for
the heralded 2015 Paris Accords will be woefully insufficient to avoid exacerbating climate
change. Thus, despite much international discussion and many platitudinous agreements,
concerns about the distribution of painful cuts will continue to prevent the nations of the world
from even approaching an efficient agreement. Our threatened planet needs a more sophisticated
approach to this and other collective action problems, a field pioneered by Mancur Olson.
Citation
Zeckhauser, Richard. "Mancur Olson and the Tragedy of the Unbalanced Commons." Decisions 24 (December 2015).