Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays

Thomas C. Schelling

  • Thomas C. Schelling is Co-Recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics

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

  • Cover: Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays
  • A photo of the author

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.