A Model United Nations experiment on climate change negotiations

We use Model United Nations simulations of the Conference of the Parties to study climate change negotiations under two different negotiation protocols. One protocol is similar to the Paris negotiations: Countries have to agree on a non-binding resolution on the reduction of world-wide CO2 emissions, and each country has to decide on a nationally determined voluntary contribution, i.e. a commitment by how much to reduce its own emissions. The second protocol focuses on a uniform carbon price. Countries have to agree to a minimum carbon price that applies to all countries signing the resolution. Schmidt and Ockenfels (2019) have shown in an abstract laboratory experiment that negotiations on a uniform minimum price for carbon achieve substantially higher reductions of CO2 emissions than Paris style negotiations. Our study builds upon this laboratory experiments and extends its scope methodologically and contextually. We conduct a field experiment, using for the first time a Model United Nations simulation of the Conference of the Parties to explore (with increased external validity) the effect of two negotiation mechanism on the CO2 emissions reduction. We randomly assign delegates to two treatments (1) Paris, (2) Uniform Global Carbon Price and measure the CO2 emissions reductions goals worldwide and at the national level. The experiment is designed such that the two treatments differ only in the negotiation protocol.