The surge of refugees arriving in Europe has accentuated the malfunctioning of the common European asylum system: the lack of coordination between nation states and failure in the common protection of refugees were the main outcomes of the so-called refugee crisis. This article builds on the literature on public goods and policy compliance in order to explain the failure of European countries to provide humanitarian protection to refugees. A sequential gametheoretical model serves to demonstrate the strategic interaction between states and refugees in European asylum policy. The analysis demonstrates that although both groups of actors benefit from a functioning European asylum system, they also have few incentives to contribute to the public good. States aim to reduce their individual refugee burden and refugees seek protection in their preferred destination country. The findings suggest that an effective provision of refugee protection requires both member states and refugees to contribute mutually to the public good.

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a service that supports customers’ transportation needs by providing information and ticketing for a multitude of transport modes in one interface; thus, buy potentially fostering multimodality and public transport, it represents an important lever to reduce negative transportation impacts such as emissions and congestion. By means of an online survey conducted in Switzerland, we try to understand potential user needs as well as factors that would motivate the use of MaaS. Comparing the openness to use MaaS for specific trip purposes like commuting and leisure activities, we find the lowest level of openness for commuting and the highest for weekend leisure trips. Intention to reduce car usage was positively related to openness to MaaS in commuting. On the other hand, factors that positively influence openness to using MaaS for leisure activities include a higher education degree, experience with carsharing and the use of transport-related climate policy announcements directly affecting consumers. These findings suggest focusing specifically on either commuting or leisure activities when designing policy measures.

Reaching the goal of the Paris Agreement requires substantial investment. The developed country parties have agreed to provide USD$100 billion in climate finance annually from 2020 to 2025. Ongoing negotiations on post-2025 commitments are likely to exceed that sum and include a broader scope of parties. However, there is no guidance regarding the allocation of contributions. Here, we develop a dynamic mechanism based on two conventional pillars of a burden sharing mechanism: emission responsibility and ability to pay. The mechanism adds dynamic components that reflect the Paris principle to 'ratchet-up' ambition; it rewards countries with ambitious mitigation targets and relieves countries with a high degree of climate vulnerability. Including developed country parties only, we find that ten countries should bear 85% of climate finance contributions (65% if all parties to the Paris Agreement are included). In both scopes, increasing climate ambition is rewarded. If the EU increased its emission reduction target from 40% to 55% by 2030, member states could reduce their climate finance contributions by up to 3.3%. The proposed mechanism allows for an inclusion of sub-, supra-or non-state actors. For example, we find a contribution of USD$3.3 billion annually for conventionally excluded emissions from international aviation and shipping.

No abstract