National climate policies in international comparison: The Climate Change Cooperation Index

Valid and reliable measurement of countries' climate policy performance is important both for policy-making and analytical purposes. The authors contribute to this end by introducing a new dataset that offers such information for up to 172 countries for the time period 1996-2008. Their Climate Change Cooperation Index (C3-I) captures overall performance as well as performance in terms of political behavior (output) and emissions (outcome). The C3-I, thus, allows for a systematic global comparison of countries' climate policies. The paper also compares the C3-I with its most relevant alternative, the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) by Germanwatch. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.