Saddle Point
Back to the cover

Part I · Foundations

  1. 0 Mathematical Foundations
  2. 1 Observation, Beliefs, and Decision

Part II · Engines

  1. 2 Competing for Allocation: The Blotto Game
  2. 3 Bargaining, Commitment, and Repeated Cooperation
  3. 4 Signals, Disclosure, and Persuasion
  4. 5 Different Models of One Game
  5. 6 Leadership and Rules: Inspection
  6. 7 Decisions in Time
  7. 8 Many Agents
  8. 9 Networks, Dependence, and Resilience
  9. 10 Aggregating Information

Part III · Systems

  1. 11 Architecture of Decision Support
  2. 12 Simulation and Wargaming with AI Agents

Part IV · Limits

  1. 13 Where the Mathematics Stops
Thomas C. Schelling, 2010

Chapter 4 · Signals, Disclosure, and Persuasion

Thomas C. Schelling

1921 – 2016

Photograph: New America, Thomas C. Schelling, 16 April 2010; cropped by Artem.G; Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Shown toned. File and licence

The problem on the desk

When several agreements would benefit both parties, what determines who concedes? Schelling investigated commitment: making one’s own retreat difficult can change what the other party is prepared to accept.1

A life in moments

  1. 1921

    Oakland

    Born in 1921.2

  2. 1951

    Harvard University · Cambridge

    Completed his doctorate.3

  3. 1953

    Yale University · New Haven

    Began his academic career at Yale.4

  4. 1956

    Yale University · New Haven

    Published An Essay on Bargaining.5

  5. 1958

    Harvard University · Cambridge

    Joined Harvard and helped establish the Center for International Affairs.4

  6. 1990

    University of Maryland · College Park

    Moved to Maryland’s public-policy school.4

  7. 2016

    Died on 13 December.4

Every line rests on a dated source (numbered below) unless it carries a mark: R for an inference, S for a story as told.

In their own words

the power to constrain an adversary may depend on the power to bind oneself

An Essay on Bargaining, 19567

A story

A house buyer changes the bargain

In the 1956 essay, Schelling constructs a house buyer who accepts a penalty for paying above a stated limit. The point is not persuasive speech: the buyer changes the incentives that the seller faces.6

An explicitly hypothetical example from his paper, not an event in his private life.

Around Schelling

  • doctoral student A. Michael Spence MGP lists Spence among Schelling’s doctoral students.3
  • shared a prize Robert J. Aumann Shared the 2005 economics prize with Aumann.4

Recorded as advisors Arthur Smithies, Wassily Leontief, James Duesenberry Recorded as students A. Michael Spence, Richard Zeckhauser, Tyler Cowen Mathematics Genealogy Project record

The genealogy lists only what the database records; a missing name is not a missing teacher.

The card in the book

Economist who received his doctorate from Harvard and taught at Yale, at Harvard and at the University of Maryland; he spent a year at the RAND Corporation. He studied bargaining, commitment and credibility — how a player can gain by limiting its own options or information — and later how individual choices aggregate into collective patterns. He shared the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Aumann for having enhanced the understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.

Main works The Strategy of Conflict (1960); Arms and Influence (1966); Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978).

To read further

Sources (7)
  1. An Essay on Bargaining, Thomas C. Schelling, 1956; pp. 281–282
  2. Thomas Schelling, Nobelist and game theory pioneer, 95, Harvard Gazette, 2016; 14 December; birth and dissertation paragraphs; caption contains a conflicting degree date
  3. Mathematics Genealogy Project: 201551, Mathematics Genealogy Project; Degree, advisor and student table
  4. In Memoriam: Thomas C. Schelling, 1921–2016, Weatherhead Center, Harvard University, 2016; 21 December; Yale, Harvard, Maryland and award paragraphs
  5. An Essay on Bargaining, Thomas C. Schelling, 1956; p. 281, author affiliation
  6. An Essay on Bargaining, Thomas C. Schelling, 1956; pp. 283–284
  7. An Essay on Bargaining, Thomas C. Schelling, 1956; p. 282, second paragraph; excerpt

The facts on this page were gathered for the site from the sources listed, each checked against its locator; the book's card is reproduced unchanged.