The Environmental Responsibility of Firms and Insurance Coverage in an Evolutionary Game

Abstract

Climate change can deeply impact a company’s business performance, therefore insurance is an important tool to mediate such a risk, helping firms to remain on the market. Polluting companies want to maximize profits according to different business strategies and that appeal to their risk attitude. Firms are Nash players in an oligopoly market adopting two production technologies, brown or green. Climate change loss is a function of the firms’ emissions and is considered endogenous in the maximization problem of the players. We study firms’ behavior in choosing their more profitable strategy through a random matching evolutionary context. Analysis of the model reveals that the dynamic system admits at most seven stationary states. The paper focuses on the regime in which all the possible strategies coexist, due to its economic relevance. Moreover, the results of the sensitivity analysis show interesting policies to nudge an ecological transition.