International climate policy: does it matter? An empirical assessment

This paper is about the impact of international climate policy on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. We focus on the time before the official GHG emission reduction phase according to Kyoto (before 2008) and the hard and soft law elements of the agreement. We find that expectations on future GHG emission reduction had significant impacts on climate policies by studying the relationship between GHG emission reduction and stages of the Kyoto Protocol process (signing, ratification, entry into force). This observation applies to Annex I and non-Annex I countries. Moreover, approaching ratification, the initially observed difference between both country groups becomes less significant.