"Schelling here offers an early analysis of 'tipping' in social situations involving a large number of individuals." --official citation for the 2005 Nobel Prize

Micromotives and Macrobehavior was originally published over twenty-five years ago, yet the stories it tells feel just as fresh today. And the subject of these stories--how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group--is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a...

All of the essays in this new collection by Thomas Schelling convey his unique perspective on individuals and society. This perspective has several characteristics: it is strategic in that it assumes that an important part of people's behavior is motivated by the thought of influencing other people's expectations; it views the mind as being separable into two or more parts (rational/irrational; present-minded/future-minded); it is motivated by policy concerns--smoking and other addictions, global warming, segregation, nuclear war; and while it accepts many of the basic assumptions of...