Thomas Schelling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Thomas Schelling

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 University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis".

Schelling's most famous book, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1960), has pioneered the study of bargaining and strategic behavior and is considered one of the hundred books that have been most influential in the West since 1945. In this book he introduced the concept of the Schelling point.

In 1971, he published a widely cited article dealing with racial dynamics called "Dynamic Models of Segregation". In this piece, he explained how a neighborhood of only white residents could quickly become a neighborhood of all black residents, even if none of the white residents were absolutely opposed to living in an integrated neighborhood.

Schelling has been involved in the global warming debate. 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.

Dr. 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.

External links

• Nobel Prize Announcement

• More information about that Nobel Prize

• Laudatio (on Schelling), by Maarten C.W. Janssen.

• Foreign Affairs article by Schelling on Global Warming.

• Disinfopedia article on Schelling.

• Interview with Schelling in 2005