Thomas Schelling

For the German philosopher, see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.

Thomas Schelling
Lecturing at Sharif University of Technology
Born	(1921-04-14) 14 April 1921 Oakland, California, USA
Nationality	United States
Academic career
Field	Game theory
Institution	Yale University Harvard University University of Maryland New England Complex Systems Institute
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley Harvard University Yale University
Contributions	The Strategy of Conflict Arms and Influence Micromotives &      Macrobehavior
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2005)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Thomas Crombie Schelling (born 14 April 1921) is an American economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Robert Aumann) for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis."

Biography

Early years

Schelling was born to John M. Schelling and Zelda M. Ayres in Oakland, California. Schelling graduated from San Diego High. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1951.

Career

He served with the Marshall Plan in Europe, the White House, and the Executive Office of the President from 1948 to 1953. He wrote most of his dissertation on national income behavior working at night while in Europe. He left government to join the economics faculty at Yale University, and in 1958 he was appointed Professor of Economics at Harvard. In 1969 he joined the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Schelling previously taught for twenty years at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, as well as conducted research at IIASA, in Laxenburg, Austria between 1994 and 1999.

In 1993 Schelling was awarded the NAS Award for Behavior Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War from the National Academy of Sciences. He also received an honorary Doctorate degree from Yale University in 2009 as well as an honorary degree from the University of Manchester.

Contributions to popular culture

Stanley Kubrick read an article Schelling wrote that included a description of the Peter George novel Red Alert, and conversations between Kubrik, Schelling, and George eventually led to the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Personal life

Schelling was married to Corinne Tigay Saposs from 1947 to 1991, with whom he had four sons. His marriage to second wife, Alice M. Coleman occurred later in 1991.

The Strategy of Conflict

Schelling's book, The Strategy of Conflict (1960), has pioneered the study of bargaining and strategic behavior in what Schelling refers to, in the book, as "conflict behavior".

The Strategy of Conflict is considered one of the hundred books that have been most influential in the West since 1945. In this book he introduced concepts like focal point and credible commitment. Chapter headings include A Reorientation of Game Theory, Randomization of Promises and Threats and Surprise Attack: A Study of Mutual Distrust.

In an article celebrating Schelling's Nobel Prize for Economics Michael Kinsley, Washington Post Op Ed Columnist and former student of Schelling's, summarizes the professor's Reorientation of Game Theory as follows:

"[Y]ou're standing at the edge of a cliff, chained by the ankle to someone else. You'll be released, and one of you will get a large prize, as soon as the other gives in. How do you persuade the other guy to give in, when the only method at your disposal – threatening to push him off the cliff – would doom you both?"

"Answer: You start dancing, closer and closer to the edge. That way, you don't have to convince him that you would do something totally irrational: plunge him and yourself off the cliff. You just have to convince him that you are prepared to take a higher risk than he is of accidentally falling off the cliff. If you can do that, you win."

Arms and Influence

Schelling's theories about war were extended in Arms and Influence (1966). The blurb states that it "carries forward the analysis so brilliantly begun in his earlier The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (with Morton Halperin, 1961), and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on modern war and diplomacy". Chapter headings include The Diplomacy of Violence, The Diplomacy of Ultimate Survival and The Dynamics of Mutual Alarm.

Models of segregation

In 1969 and 1971, Schelling published widely cited articles dealing with racial dynamics and what he termed "a general theory of tipping". In these papers he showed that a preference that one's neighbors to be of the same color, or even a preference for a mixture up to some limit, could lead to total segregation, thus arguing that motives, malicious or not, were indistinguishable as to explaining the phenomenon of complete local separation of distinct groups. He used coins on graph paper to demonstrate his theory by placing pennies and nickels in different patterns on the "board" and then moving them one by one if they were in an "unhappy" situation.

Schelling's dynamics has been cited as a way of explaining variations are found in what are regarded as meaningful differences – gender, age, race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, religion, etc. Once a cycle of such change has begun, it may have a self-sustaining momentum. His 1978 book Micromotives and Macrobehaviors expanded on, and generalized, these themes and is standardly cited in the literature of agent-based computational economics.

Global warming

Schelling has been involved in the global warming debate since chairing a commission for President Carter in 1980. He believes climate change poses a serious threat to developing nations, but that the threat to the United States has been exaggerated. Drawing on his experience with the post-war Marshall Plan, he has argued that addressing global warming is a bargaining problem: if the world is able to reduce emissions, poor countries will receive most of the benefits but rich countries will bear most of the costs.

Schelling was a contributing participant of the Copenhagen Consensus.

See also

• The Art of War
• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Carl von Clausewitz
• Game theory
• Schelling point
• Precommitment
• Internality
• Egonomics
• Vicarious problem solving

Bibliography

• Official bibliography from Thomas Schelling's University webpages (.pdf)
• A list of articles by Thomas Schelling which may be accessed through JSTOR

External links

• Nobel Prize Announcement
• Schelling Nobel Prize Lecture
• IDEAS/RePEc