Choice and Consequence [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2008] Thomas C Schelling

by Thomas C. Schelling

New

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology

378 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Thomas Crombie Schelling was 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 Prize in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis."

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Dora]

From a list of 10 books to read on economics by the authors of Freakonomics

[Leonardo]

Citado en La idea de Justicia.

[Irvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read, behavioral economics in a nutshell explained.

[Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ***. Dense and dated, but worth reading from a historical appreciation perspective. Tedious explanations of decision matrices are a slog.

[Snehal Bhagat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classical economic theory is underpinned by the assumption of rational consumers, possessing complete information to make decisions in a perfect marketplace. And even though each of these premises is flawed, in that it does not reflect conditions in the normal world, the model helps explain a wide variety of economic phenomena with great success.

It does not however lend itself very well to explaining social phenomena; a completely rational, fully cognitive agent with perfect information wouldn't procrastinate, or eat, drink and smoke to excess, do drugs, or fall in love with a person completely wrong for them. Without the flaws of human nature and the asymmetry of information, Survivor wouldn't be much of a show. With them, we have fun with decision theory and behavioral economics.

Schelling's is among the pioneering works in this field that now sees so much output in the form of Freakonomics like books that take on problems as diverse as why allowing abortion makes socio-economic sense or why there is a light in the refrigerator but not in the freezer.

In addition to tackling a wide variety of such interesting issues, Schelling also makes a case for how complex, ethical dilemmas can be reformulated in economic terminology so that they cease to be emotionally charged and lend themselves to objective, econometric analysis, and how, when this is done, the conclusions can be very surprising.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far its been interesting and easy to read which give it at least four stars in my book. We'll see if its life changing.

Got boring at about pg. 100; I put it down. I did enjoy the concept of one person having different economic interests depending on their situation. Think schizophrenic duel between the current self and the future self about eating that last piece of pie.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stopped reading this book through the introduction, after losing interest in book reading for a brief period. I should pick it up again. Economics research. Ethics and economics issues. Looks very promising.

[WR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read, but useful insights into what is probably better known as behavioral economics.