Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14th 1921 -) is a American economist , as well as a Professor of foreign politics, national security, nuclear strategy and control of the weapons to the School off Public Policy of the Université of Maryland in College Park. It divides with Robert Aumann the “Nobel Prize” of economy for 2005, to have: " improved our comprehension of the mechanisms of conflict and co-operation by the analysis of the Game theory.”

Biography

Thomas C. Schelling is the son of John Mr. Schelling born the April 15th 1884, Captain to the retirement, deceased the April 5th 1972 and of Zelda Ayres, born the September 5th 1912 deceased in 1994. " Crombie" , its second first name, is the family name of his/her maternal grandmother, Nancy Crombie. It has an older brother, Robert A. Schelling, born the May 23rd 1917, and a younger sister, Nancy Schelling, born the December 5th 1922 and married to Robert E. Dorfman.

Thomas Schelling is divorced Corrine T. Saposs, married the September 15th 1947 and of which it had four wire: Andrew, Thomas, Daniel, and Robert, and remarié in 1991 with Alice Coleman Berger, born in Poland on July 16th, 1932 from Zygmunt Modzelewski says Roman Shepherd and of Jadwiga Eva born Hechtkopf, and divorced the doctor Roy Mr. Coleman of which it had two children, David Daniel Coleman and Robert Berger Coleman .

Thomas Schelling received his License in Economic scenes (BSc. Econ.) of the University of California with Berkeley in 1944 and its Doctorate (Ph.D.) in economy of the University of Harvard in 1951.

At the beginning of its career, in 1945, while preparing its doctorate, it entered to the Federal Budget Office . Then, in 1948, it worked with Paris with the ambassador Averell Harriman for the implementation of the Marshall plan, to then follow it to the White House to belong to its team charged of the international business.

Thomas Schelling obtained its first post of professor with Yale, then it passed to the Université of Harvard, to hold to with it during twenty years the pulpit Lucius NR. Littauer d' Économie political with the '' John F. Kennedy School off Government ''.

In 1958 Thomas Schelling was recruited by the RAND Corporation to reflect on the strategy with intellectuals such as Hermann Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter by applying the Game theory invented by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. It is there that it became acquainted with Robert Aumann. It belonged to the team of Albert Wohlstetter, then assistant of Paul Nitze, with the negotiations of Geneva on the control of the armaments.

Thomas Schelling also took part to maintain a debate on the " warming of the atmosphère" , in the line of its handing-over in prospect by the economists, recalling that the political regulations that one claims to draw some do not result from this necessarily. For this reason, it was one of the experts of the Consensus of Copenhagen inspired by Bjørn Lomborg. It is in this field that, of 1994 with 1999, it published research with the IIASA of Laxenburg, in Austria.

Principal work

The most famous book of Schelling, The Strategy off Conflict (" Strategy of the conflit" , PUF), opened the way being studied of the Pari S and the strategic behavior. One quoted it among the 100 works which have " more influencé" the thought Occident ale after the Second world war.

It primarily designed the war like a form of negotiation supported on the use of the force. It there has, said it,

"resemblances which light us between, let us say, to operate in a limited war and to change file in a congestion, to dissuade the Russians and to threaten to punish its own children… the modern balance of terror and the antique institution of the otages."

One sees that the author sought always to anchor his reasoning in the reality of the concrete action, which it will develop in Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York, Norton, 1978, French transl.: " The Tyranny of small the décisions" , Paris, PUF, 1980).

The Not focal

It is in this book that it presents for the first time the concept of Point focal , also called Point of Schelling . The " Not focal" is, in Game theory, a solution to which the participants in a play who cannot communicate between them will tend to join, because it seems to them to show a characteristic which will make it also choose by the other.

Thomas Schelling gives the example of two people who separate while having forgotten to give appointment. Where do they have the most chances to be found, each one knowing its own concerns, which the other knows, and those of the other? At the time where he invented the concept, the focal Point of the students was the main station; and that of nonthe students, the central post office. The theorists hastened to imagine more formalized situations, artificially simplified, like the play where one presents to two separate participants two identical panels carrying each one four boxes, in their announcing that if both choose the same one, they will receive each one a reward. It is enough that one of the boxes shows a characteristic distinct from the others - as a different color - so that each one, knowing that the other can observe it also, finds rational to indicate it. And it is what the experiments show in the majority of the cases. The concept also applies to the participants in a conflict each one having goals of war and limits not to be exceeded and being able to imagine those of the other. In the absence of communication, they can be found on certain modes of belligerency while avoiding the others.

Thomas Schelling published the continuation of his rational analyzes of the conflicts in Arms and Influence (1966).

The strategic adviser

As from 1964 it had delivered its opinion on the policy of climbing and bombardment of the Guerre of Vietnam, via John McNaughton his colleague of Harvard which it had known in Paris, and which it had contributed to make name under-secretary with Defense for the businesses of national security and advise nearer of the Minister Robert McNamara.

The threat of a nuclear parity between the the United States and the the USSR had called into question the strategy of President Eisenhower of " nuclear reprisals massives" against the USSR in the event of invasion of Europe, and Thomas Schelling had imagined to reinforce the credibility of the threat while envisaging strike warning " making suffer the civilians and threatening to make some suffer davantage" , which one called the 'Response graduée".

The question arose of convincing the Nam North-Vietnamese soldier to cease his attacks against the South, and a bombardment campaign had been initially imagined; the expertise of Thomas Schelling consisted in recommending the use of the greatest force as of the beginning, and to stop quickly in the event of failure. As of March 1964, McNaughton made known this failure with President Johnson but this one chooses the climbing.

The theory of the nondesired segregation

In 1971, in the Newspaper off Mathematical Sociology (pp. 143-186), it publishes " Dynamic Models off Segregation" (" dynamic models of ségrégation"), article which treats dynamics of the division of space between the “races”, and which will be particularly quoted.

Following work of Morton Grodzins, creator of the expression " Tipping not " with beginning of the year 60, it rationally shows in which conditions a district where the races are mixed can become practically black even if it is not what its inhabitants wished: if each one admits, even wishes, a vicinity different from him but " not trop" if not it leaves the district, the end result will depend on this last threshold and the starting proportion. Schelling shows, by applying the game theory, that at a rate of this limited tolerance , the district can be found in two possible stable situations: one of pure segregation or where the two colors remain mixed.

Schelling had made use of parts of nickel and of copper posed on a plate to represent the carriers of the various characteristics and he tells that it is the collection of coins of his/her son who had given him the idea of it.

One could extend this theory of the spontaneous evolution of the mixed groups starting from weak preferences to all kinds of personal features, which it is of the age, the sex, the language, the sexual orientation, of the religion, etc It is enough that the initial conditions lend themselves to it so that the groups are organized in a nondesired way at the beginning.

Computer simulations represent this kind of interactive systems today: those are distinguished from the models known as d'" équilibre" in what they implement " automats cellulaires" , where one does not introduce into the model the rules of behavior of individual actors, and where one discovers the various states of the system to which these rules lead at the end of a certain number of interactions.

See too

Related articles

External bonds

• "Hockey Helmets, Concealed Weapons, and Daylight Saving: With Study off Binary Choices with Externalities" (.pdf) by Thomas C. Schelling, The Newspaper off Conflict Resolution, T. XVII, N° September 3rd, th and th 1973.

• " Ethics, Law, and the Exercise off Coil-Command" . (pdf), by Thomas Schelling, To tan Been worth Readings one Human , University of Michigan, March 19th and 21st 1982.
• " Facing the Paradox off Deterrence" (.pdf), by James P. Scanlan, The Midwest Quarterly , T. XXIX, number 1, autumn 1987.
• " Summon Economics Total Warming" off; by Thomas C. Schelling, The American Economic Review 82/1, 1992.
• " The Legacy off Hiroshima: In Half-Century Without Nuclear War" by Thomas Schelling, The Key To defer , Phi Beta Kappa Society, volume 65, number 3, spring 2000.
• " Schelling' S Focal Point" , by Nicolas Nova, Blog Pasta and vinegar , September 18th, 2003.
• " How Should We Handle Uncertainty?" (RealVideo, at the end of 52 min and 40 S), Discussion with the Cato Institute on " Total warning: the State off the Debate" , Thomas C. Schelling, following Robert Lempert, Indur Goklany and Peter Van Doren, December 12th, 2003.
• " Arms and Influence: Meet Thomas Schelling" Blog Arms and Influence, April 18th, 2004.
• ''' The Schelling Segregation Model Demonstration Software ''', presentation by Chris Cook of a downloadable program ( Windows ) simulating the model of segregation of Thomas Schelling, December 8th, 2004.
• Advertisement of the handing-over of the Nobel Prize.
• Exposed merit of the impétrants
• Information on the price to the memory of Alfred Nobel.
• Article devoted to in Thomas Schelling in '' Disinfopedia ''.
• " Greenhouse effect" by Thomas Schelling, The Concise Encyclopedia off Economics .
• " interview with Aaron Steelman one February 7,2005" , Federal Reserve Bank off Richmond Research , spring 2005.
• " Thomas Schelling, new Nobel Laureate" by Tyler Cowen, Marginal The revolution , October 10th, 2005.
• Interview of Thomas Schelling for '' National Public Radio operator '', October 10th, 2005.
• " All Bread, No Profit: Nobel prize winner Thomas Schelling' S little-known role in the Vietnam War" by Fred Kaplan, Slate magazine , October 11th, 2005.
• " How happy year economic theory the atomic bomb" by Tim Harford, Financial Times , October 12th, 2005.
• " Year interview with Thomas C. Schelling: Interpretation off range theory and the checkerboard model" (.pdf) by NR. Emrah Aydınonat, Economics Bulletin , October 20th, 2005.
• " Iranian Use off Nuclear Weapon one Israel would Be Commits suicide Bomb" , discussion with Nathan Gardels, '' Nobel Prizes winner More '', October 27th, 2005
• " Ein Preis für Dr. Strangelove" by Bernd Schröder, '' Telepolis '', October 19th, 2005
• Petition in protest against the attribution of the price to the warmongers of extreme right-hand side Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann.

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