Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays

Schelling, Thomas C.

ISBN 10: 0674025679 / ISBN 13: 9780674025677

Published by Harvard University Press, 2007

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 5178008-n

Bibliographic Details

Title: Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Publication Date: 2007

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis:

All of the essays in this new collection by Thomas Schelling convey his unique perspective on individuals and society. This perspective has several characteristics: it is strategic in that it assumes that an important part of people's behavior is motivated by the thought of influencing other people's expectations; it views the mind as being separable into two or more parts (rational/irrational; present-minded/future-minded); it is motivated by policy concerns--smoking and other addictions, global warming, segregation, nuclear war; and while it accepts many of the basic assumptions of economics--that people are forward-looking, rational decision makers, that resources are scarce, and that incentives are important--it is open to modifying them when appropriate, and open to the findings and insights of other social science disciplines.

Schelling--a 2005 Nobel Prize winner-- has been one of the four or five most important social scientists of the past fifty years, and this collection shows why.

About the Author:

Thomas C. Schelling was Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics and School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He was co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.