How can international institutions be engineered to align individual state incentives with the collective provision of global public goods? Scott Barrett, a professor of natural resource economics, utilizes game theory and historical case studies to examine why nations often fail to cooperate on existential threats. He argues that the structure of international agreements must be fundamentally redesigned to transform the incentives that currently discourage participation in global initiatives.

Experts in international political economy frequently cite this work as a foundational text for understanding the intersection of economic incentives and global governance. Readers note the clarity of the prose, which makes complex game-theoretic concepts accessible to those outside the field of economics.