News: Thomas Schelling to Give Nobel Lecture at IQSS
by Kim Popielski Kriz, IQSS February 15, 2006
The Institute for Quantitative Social Science is pleased to announce that 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Thomas Schelling, will present his Nobel Lecture, "An Astonishing Sixty Years--the Legacy of Hiroshima," as part of its weekly Harvard-MIT Seminar on Positive Political Economy series. The talk will take place on Thursday, March 2 at 4:30pm at the Fong Auditorium in Boylston Hall. A short reception in the Ticknor Lounge will follow.
Thomas Schelling is the Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus at the University of Maryland , and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus at Harvard University. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine , and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He shares his latest honor, the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, with Robert J. Aumann of Hebrew University in Jerusalem . The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize to Schelling and Aumann "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." Professor Schelling is known for his innovative use of game-theory as a unifying framework for the social sciences. His published research includes work in military strategy and arms control, energy and environmental policy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism.
The Harvard-MIT Seminar on Positive Political Economy is the ideal forum for Professor Schelling's talk. Speakers present research that integrates the study of economics and politics, whether by studying "economic" behavior in the political process or "political" behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. A schedule of this semester's talks. The Thomas Schelling lecture will be co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.