Preface 1. Strategies of Commitment Climate and Society 2. What Makes Greenhouse Sense? 3. The Economic Diplomacy of Geoengineering 4. Intergenerational and International Discounting Commitment as Self-Command 5. Self-Command in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice 6. Coping Rationally with Lapses from Rationality 7. Against Backsliding 8. Addictive Drugs: The Cigarette Experience Society and Life 9. Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of Happiness 10. Should Numbers Determine Whom to Save? Economics and Social Policy 11. What Do Economists Know? 12. Why Does Economics Only Help with Easy Problems? 13. Prices as Regulatory Instruments Weapons and Warfare 14. Meteors, Mischief, and War 15. Research by Accident 16. Vietnam: Reflections and Lessons Social Dynamics 17. Social Mechanisms and Social Dynamics 18. Dynamic Models of Segregation Decisions of the Highest Order 19. The Legacy of Hiroshima Credits Index
Thomas C. Schelling is Distinguished University Professor, Department of Economics and School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, Harvard University. He is co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Thomas Schelling, 2005 Nobel laureate in economics, is interested
in the strategies--rational, irrational, mean, kind--that people
use to constrain their behavior. In these essays, he looks at
addiction, temptation and resolve, as well as the use of threats,
promises and bluffing. What's fascinating is that he applies his
analysis of these strategies not only to individual behavior but
also to critical issues like race relations, abortion and the
behavior of nations--for example, international agreements to
reduce greenhouse gases. Schelling is that rarest of creatures, an
economist who writes clearly, takes on practical questions and
thinks them through alongside his reader. He is delightful to
read.
*Los Angeles Times*
In recent decades a few ambitious and imaginative economists have
tried to break the surly bonds of statistics and produce ideas all
of us can understand and maybe use. Among these noble warriors
against the evils of obscurantism, Thomas C. Schelling has
established himself as the champion...Schelling's new book,
Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays, takes us on a readable
tour through the concerns of a major academic career.
*National Post*
[Schelling] offers informative perspectives on a wide range of
topics...Anyone interested in the behaviors of individual or
societies will find many of the pieces thought-provoking.
*Science*
Whether by accident or design, this collection of essays is well
timed to celebrate Thomas Schelling's winning the 2005 Nobel Prize
in Economics. With one minor exception all the essays have been
published previously. On the scale of Schelling's long career, most
are relatively recent productions. All the characteristic features
of his work--the breadth of his interests, the originality and
creativity of his theorizing, the intellectual rigor of his policy
analysis and the freshness and clarity of his writing--are on
display. The title essay is an elegant reprise of the work for
which Schelling is best known among his fellow economists: the
study of strategy commitment. Several essays explore the
possibilities of commitment as a mechanism of self-control.
Schelling treats the individual as a collection of selves,
interacting strategically with one another. He writes with empathy
and imagination about the strategies by which one self tries to
forestall choices that another self will want to make, and the
countervailing strategies by which the latter tries to evade the
constraints imposed by the former.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
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