Results for “department why not” 187 found
How easy is it to fill those Treasury jobs?
In a search for "non-compromised" candidates, Matt writes:
positions. Timothy Geithner needs a Deputy Secretary. And then there’s
a need for an Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, an
Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, and an Assistant
Secretary for Financial Markets. There are other positions in the
department, but those are the four where you might think that
experience with high finance specifically was vitally necessary. It’s
only three jobs. And you can’t tell me that there aren’t four people
alive in the United States who have experience with finance but lack
compromising relationship[s]. Why not Simon Johnson, for example? Give him
one of the jobs, and a quarter of your problem would be solved. Indeed,
if you even got three non-bankers to fill four of the
positions, I think that would create a lot of piece of mind. Nouriel
Roubini, to give another name well-known to the blogosphere, seems
perfectly well-qualified for a job at Treasury–he’s even worked in the
past as a “senior adviser” to Tim Geithner.
One point is that both Johnson and Roubini were born outside of this country and perhaps neither is an American citizen. More fundamentally, the job requires close to a 24/7 time commitment, a huge cut in pay (might Roubini earn 50K per talk?, along with enjoying complete personal freedom), an ability to "stick to message" and give up the right to speak one's mind in public, managerial and person-handling skills, a smooth enough temperament, the ability to tolerate a gross imbalance between responsibility and resources, the possible end of an academic career (for some people it's hard to keep on caring), and a very real chance to fail and fall flat on one's face. Toss in near-perfect tax records and regular payment of Social Security contributions for one's Green Card-holding housekeeper.
That's all without even being in charge. Is Geithner an easy guy to work with? You won't know until you say "yes."
I once, by sheer accident, ran into Johnson in the lobby of an NPR studio and he was smiling.
How many brilliant academics even manage to make good deans?
Infrastructure: Roads and The Smart Grid
The first thing people think about when someone says "infrastructure" is roads and bridges. That’s unfortunate because we already spend over $100 billion a year on transportation infrastructure and the truth is we don’t need that much more. Peter Orzag, President-Elect Obama’s choice for OMB estimated – when Director of the CBO – that an additional $20 billion in spending, mostly to maintain current transportation infrastructure, would achieve 83% of the net benefits to be had from more transportation infrastructure spending. Moreover, in many cases, congestion pricing would be both greener and more efficient than greater spending. A better program would be to follow Germany and several innovative state programs to get congestion pricing using GPS technology up and running, especially for trucks.
Even more valuable than transportation infrastructure would be greater investment in electricity infrastructure, a smart grid. Consider that in 2003 a massive, widespread, power outage threw 50 million people in the Northeastern states and Ontario, Canada out of power – disrupting lives and the economy. Why did this happen? Because of a failure to "trim trees" in Eastlake, Ohio – now that’s a dumb grid. And remember that only a few years earlier, the most innovative, high-tech industries in the world were shut down by blackouts caused by our primitive electricity grid. Overall, blackouts cost the U.S. on the order of $100 billion a year.
The smart gird is a not one idea but many technologies such as real-time pricing (smart meters), superconductive smart cable, and plug-n-play architecture that combine to produce a grid that is decentralized, self-healing, robust, and smart for both producers and consumers. Decentralized power, for example, makes it easier to isolate problems, "route" power to different areas, and maintain robustness in the face of falling trees and other problems. Plug and play architecture means that new technologies such as electric cars can be automatically used as both consumers and producers (via storage) of electricity, as needed, on the fly. Plug-n-play, the open-source of electricity infrastructure, will also open the field of electricity generation and storage to far greater innovation than is possible now.
Useful references include the Department of Energy’s somewhat breathless introduction for the layperson, The Smart Grid, The National Energy Technology Laboratory’s The Modern Grid Strategy, the Smart Grid newsletter and papers by Kiesling and also Dismukes in Electric Choices (a book I had a hand in).
The smart grid did not receive prominent attention in Obama’s infrastructure speech but the campaign called for matching grants to investment in smart grid technology and support for smart meters and real-time pricing. An investment tax credit for smart grid technologies and more foresighted regulation (price regulation has limited investment in needed infrastructure) could encourage the construction of much-needed electricity infrastructure while maintaining private investment incentives and promoting innovation.
Where have the graduate students gone?
Applications to take the GRE are down and that means the number of graduate students is unlikely to rise, in contrast to the traditional pattern of greater graduate school attendance during recessions. Here are a few hypotheses:
Stewart has several theories about why declines may be taking place
this year, despite historic trends. She said it was possible, as ETS
officials suggested, that the credit crunch was making it more
difficult for students to borrow – or that hearing about the crunch
discouraged some from trying. In that same vein, she said that with
many colleges and universities announcing budget cuts, many departments
may not have the same levels of funds to offer in fellowship support.In addition, she said that while economic uncertainty in the past
has prompted some people to decide to improve their skills so they can
seek better jobs, the turmoil is so great this year that “no one will
leave a job if they have a job – they think the risk is too much to
take.”Stewart also stressed that just because the surge in interest in
graduate school has not happened this year doesn’t mean it won’t start.
Many people these days are experiencing “freezing behavior” where they
are so uncertain about their next move and the state of the economy
that they aren’t making any changes, she noted. “It could be that this
has created a temporary pause where we would have normally seen a flow
to graduate school. That the flow hasn’t started doesn’t mean it won’t.”
I opt for paragraph #2. How about all of you? Are you in this position yourselves?
Is central bank independence gone?
It’s another bail-out of sorts today, although you won’t hear it described as such:
The Treasury Department announced today the initiation of a temporary Supplementary Financing Program at the request of the Federal Reserve. The program will consist of a series of Treasury bills, apart from Treasury’s current borrowing program, which will provide cash for use in the Federal Reserve initiatives.
Here is the link. How long will it take to win back Fed independence? There used to be talk that "The Paulson Plan" would centralize various kinds of financial regulation in the Fed. But, as it turns out, under the "beta" version of the plan, the Fed goes hat in hand to…Paulson. I guess that’s why they call it The Paulson Plan.
Hanson on Bounties
Robin beats me to a story on bounties in the Washington Post. I couldn’t have said it better so here is his full post.
A Post article today, Bounties a Bust in Hunt for Al-Qaeda:
Jaber Elbaneh is one of the world’s most-wanted terrorism suspects. In
2003, the U.S. government indicted him, posted a $5 million reward for
his capture and distributed posters bearing photos of him around the
globe. None of it worked. Elbaneh remains at large, as wanted as ever.
…Since 1984, the program has handed out $77 million to more than 50
tipsters, according to the State Department. … In 2004, Rep. Mark
Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) visited Pakistan to assess why Rewards for Justice
had generated so little information regarding al-Qaeda’s leadership. He
discovered that the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had effectively shut down
the program. There was no radio or television advertising. …In 2004, Congress passed a law authorizing the State Department to post
rewards as high as $50 million apiece — a provision with bin Laden in
mind. Last fall, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) went further, introducing a
bill that would raise the cap to $500 million. The State Department has
declined to boost the reward for bin Laden, arguing that more money was
unlikely to do any good and would only add to his notoriety.Let’s see, billions spent via ordinary means, and millions offered
in bounties, and it is the bounties they blame for Al-Qaeda’s notoriety
and failing to catch leaders? The billions are spent and gone, while
the millions in bounties we only lose when they actually work. How
then is this data suggesting we should prefer ordinary means to
bounties?
Here is one of my previous posts on bounties. The Rewards for Justice program has actually brought in some big catches.
Hayek Doesn’t Stop at the Water’s Edge
In the miasma (here and here) of people explaining why they got the war wrong here is Jim Henley explaining why he got it right.
I wasn’t born yesterday. I had heard of the Middle East before
September 12, 2001. I knew that many of the loudest advocates for war with Iraq
were so-called national-greatness conservatives who spent the 1990s arguing that
war was good for the soul. I remembered Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter and
Michael Ledeen as the knaves and fools of Iran-Contra, and drew the appropriate
conclusions about the Bush Administration wanting to employ them: it was an
administration of knaves and fools…Libertarianism. As a libertarian, I was primed to react
skeptically to official pronouncements. “Hayek doesn’t stop at the water’s
edge!” I coined that one. Not bad, huh? I could tell the difference between
the government and the country. People who couldn’t make this
distinction could not rationally cope with the idea that American foreign policy
was the largest driver of anti-American terrorism because it sounded to them too
much like “The American people deserve to be victims of terrorism.” I
could see the self-interest of the officials pushing for war – how war would
benefit their political party, their department within the government, enhance
their own status at the expense of rivals. Libertarianism made it clear how
absurd the idealistic case was. Supposedly, wise, firm and just American
guidance would usher Iraq into a new era of liberalism and comity. But none of
that was going to work unless real American officials embedded in American
political institutions were unusually selfless and astute, with a lofty and
omniscient devotion to Iraqi welfare. And, you know, they weren’t going to be
that….What all of us had in common is probably a simple recognition: War is a big
deal. It isn’t normal. It’s not something to take up casually. Any war you can
describe as “a war of choice” is a crime. War feeds on and feeds the negative
passions. It is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. Various
hawks occasionally protested that “of course” they didn’t enjoy war,
but they were almost always lying. Anyone who saw invading foreign lands and
ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies
and delusions of the time.
More here.
The reasons why I opposed the war are given here.
Hat tip to Brad DeLong for the link.
My answer
The criticism personally offends him and he cannot tolerate it. Surely you have known people like this in conversation [and department politics?], and they didn’t even have any guns or nuclear weapons or polonium behind them.
That’s with help from Natasha. Here was Bryan’s question:
Putin is popular…what’s the point of persecuting the opposition?…if he’s really so popular, why risk looking like a paranoid despot?
Conservatives vs. conservatism
Attacking conservatism, Greg Anrig writes:
I think it’s fair to equate Heritage with the conservative movement…the whole unitary executive concept about executive power began to be
formulated in the Reagan Justice Department. Those guys were pretty
much all conservatives, wouldn’t you say, Tyler?
I find the clarity here extraordinary, namely how much Anrig focuses upon labeled individuals and groups of individuals. Conservatism (yes, the concept, truly understood, includes some well-known liberals) stresses that institutions and ideas are what matter, not which group of people is in power. When institutions are bad, and the general tenor of public ideas is off base or depraved, it is not better to be governed by "conservatives," and arguably it is worse. Of course conservatives, once they achieve power, will view political matters in terms of people just as Anrig does ("we can’t let those guys back into Treasury"), if only because natural political selection eliminates those conservatives who do not.
That is one reason why conservatives so often act against conservative ideas, and why conservative politicians so often lie. In fact the better a conservative politician sounds to conservative listeners, the more inconsistent those ideas will be with the actual process of governing.
If you are a conservative looking to improve the world, one option is to improve the quality of religion in society. You should consider politics an inherently corrupting activity for conservative ideas; yet this fact, taken alone, does not prove it is better to follow left-wing ideas.
Addendum: Here is a link to Matt and Ezra on same.
Across the web
1. How have Moneyball draftpick predictions held up? Try this too.
2. Season two of Veronica Mars comes out on DVD Tuesday, but newcomers must start with Season one.
3. I have been trying to develop a theory of when some people get offended by the boasting of others. In a personal ad it is OK to say you are a doctor, but not OK to say how much you earn.
4. Department of Duh: The number one search query on AOL is "Google."
5. Rousseau and Hume once played a chess game; Rousseau’s play crushed Hume’s weak understanding of the Philidor Defense in this short sacrificial gem.
6. Why Poincare’s possibly-now-proven conjecture matters.
Fiasco II
Henry at Crooked Timber challenges me to provide more background on why the fiasco in Iraq is another instance of government failure. I do so in the comments to his post and expand somewhat here.
Government founders on problems of incentives and information. On incentives: Should we be surprised that delays, errors and incompetence are more prevalent at the INS than at bureaucracies which must deal with citizens or which face competition from the private sector?
Of course not – but then what incentives does our government have to prevent abuse of foreign
citizens? Democracy in this case provides no checks and balances because of
anti-foreign bias, the ease with which the public can ignore the deaths of
innocents abroad, and the fact that foreigners lack representation in
our legislatures or the courts. Thus, Abu Ghraib and the routine shooting of innocents is no surprise – this is what happens when government is unconstrained.
What about the incentives to
start wars? Government is bad enough when we all have access to
information. What are we going to do when the major source of
information is the government itself and they ask us to trust but not verify?
Is it a surprise that wars
are much more likely to be started when the economy is doing badly and
the President is low in the polls? Not to me but I am dismayed that people continue to be surprised when Presidents lie to make war, as if this had never happened before.
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." Lyndon Baines Johnson, October 1964.)
It’s naive to only blame particular people (Bush, Cheney et al.) and depressing when people at CT claim that if only "our guys" had been in power everything would have been ok. When you see the same behaviour again and again you ought to look to systematic factors. And even if you do believe that it is all due to Bush, Cheney et al. it’s not as if these guys came to power randomly, they won twice. The worst get on top for a reason. As a result, government ought to be designed (on which see further below) so it works when the knaves are in power and not just when the angels govern.
One response in several comments at CT is that these are arguments against democracy and not against government. If only we had followed the experts at the Pentagon we would have been ok. Frankly this response, which is an argument for Fascism, sickens me. Factually the argument is incorrect, the Pentagon and not just the civilian leaders share much of the blame for our current fiasco. Moreover, had we listened to the experts in the past, Curtis LeMay and his type would probably have sent us to nuclear hell by now. I believe in democracy but I believe in it as a constraint on government.
Governments also founder on problems of information. Whereas the market makes use of highly dispersed information in the minds of millions of individuals thousands of miles apart the government bases its information on curveball and the musings of a cabal of neo-conservatives busy counting the chapters of The Prince for gnosis. Yes, this case is especially ridiculous but have people not heard of the Gulf of Tonkin? More generally, an economy cannot be centrally planned and neither can a society (let alone can a society be centrally planned from another country by people who don’t even speak the language). The idea that our government, however competently run, can export democracy is simply the fatal conceit applied to foreign affairs.
Am I arguing that the market could have done it better? No, believe it or not, my goal is not to efficiently kick the shit out of foreigners. If something can’t be done well that’s an argument for not doing it – or at least not doing it often. I will take the unusual opportunity to agree with John Quiggan who writes at CT that in war "the likelihood of disaster is so great that the bar needs to be set very high." How high should the bar be set? Well we could begin by taking the Constitution seriously when it states that Congress alone has the power to declare war. (I know, the Constitution is a dead letter.) And, if we really get ambitious, how about making the Department of Defense live up to its name?
Kenneth Arrow on academic freedom
Bowen: There was a study done recently by an economist at Santa Clara University,
Daniel Klein, showing disproportionate numbers of registered Democrats
versus registered Republicans in various departments at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Stanford. [The study’s findings are available at
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf.] He has concluded that this
kind of ideological imbalance has a negative impact on the education of
students. He implies that
there is a temptation to hire one’s own. Conservative activist David
Horowitz has made much the same kind of statement, saying that faculty
are preaching rather than teaching. And why? Because there’s a gross
imbalance between liberals and conservatives in the professoriate. Effectively,
they are calling for government regulation of the academy [TC: Klein is not, this is inaccurate]. Do you worry
about calls for legislation at the state level to correct this
situation? Does this worry you as an economist or as a professor?
Arrow:
You know, it certainly does worry me. It would worry me a lot if
legislation passed. There was a concern at one time that there would be
repression of the left. And now there are concerns that the left is
taking over. It’s hard for me to judge, of course, but I must say that
my department contains
a number of Republicans. And they were appointed by a democratic group,
whose members said these guys are good, and we’ve got to hire them. And
so far, I have not seen it work the other way, but I’m a little
concerned about where it could swing. In this case, the criticism seems
to be just wrong, because I think the departments hire on the basis of
merit. And I think it’s nonsense to say that we’re discriminating
against Republicans. We hire them all the time. On the other hand,
there was a department here that until the 1960s would not appoint a
Jew. And, finally, the university did interfere, you see, in that case.
The dean took over the department. He took away the power to appoint
from the department and changed its composition in three or four
years. In fact, I was amazed how rapidly he was able to turn things around
to strengthen an already very good department. To defend the autonomy
of that department would not have been something I would have been very
happy to do.
Bowen: The economics department at the University of Chicago
has had a reputation for many years for being quite conservative. Do
you think that’s the exception that proves the rule that you hire, as
you said earlier, on the basis of merit, not on the basis of party
identification of ideology?
Arrow:
There are people in that department who are not conservative. It’s a
very good department. Most of the conservatives are really quite
outstanding. I think they flock together. I
don’t think it’s entirely the case where you pick your own kind. I
don’t think the economics department here is reproducing itself.
They’re different politically and methodologically. I think
methodological problems have been bigger more often than political
issues. I do not believe the
university, the central administration, should be totally unconcerned
about appointments. I used to believe that the department had to be
completely autonomous. It took me a couple of years to realize that
that was not right.
I can remember an instance at Chicago
in which there was an incident involving a professor of economics who
was sort of a village atheist type. He was a very good economist, but a
little eccentric. He believed that religion was one of the big
oppressive things in this world. This fellow saw a priest in class. He
went and gave his whole lecture on the evils of the Catholic church.
The next time the priest came, he gives another lecture. The priest
finally quit the class, and the professor said that he could finally go
on with the course.
Well,
you know, the priest went to the chair of the department who had a very
good record on academic freedom at the university. And the chair said
it was a question of academic freedom. He wouldn’t interfere with this
professor.
TC: Does anyone have data on Stanford?
Chiswick refutes Chiswick
Barry Chiswick, head of the economics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a respected scholar of immigration, had a surprisingly poorly argued op-ed in the NYTimes. Here’s the opening paragaraph:
It is often said that the American economy needs low-skilled foreign
workers to do the jobs that American workers will not do. These foreign
workers might be new immigrants, illegal aliens or, in the current
debate, temporary or guest workers. But if low-skilled foreign workers
were not here, would lettuce not be picked, groceries not bagged, hotel
sheets not changed, and lawns not mowed? Would restaurants use
disposable plates and utensils?On the face of it, this assertion seems implausible.
… If the number of low-skilled foreign workers were to fall, wages would increase. Low-skilled American workers and their families would benefit…
Bizarrely, the rest of his op-ed explains why these statements are mostly wrong! First, the lettuce:
A farmer who grows winter iceberg lettuce in Yuma County, Ariz., was
asked on the ABC program "Nightline" in April what he would do if it
were more difficult to find the low-skilled hand harvesters who work on
his farm, many of whom are undocumented workers. He replied that he
would mechanize the harvest. Such technology exists, but it is not used
because of the abundance of low-wage laborers. In their absence,
mechanical harvesters – and the higher skilled (and higher wage)
workers to operate them – would replace low-skilled, low-wage workers.
In other words, if the number of low skilled workers were to fall the lettuce would no longer be (hand) picked and low-skilled American workers would not benefit from an increase in wages!
What about lawn mowing and hotel cleaning?
Facing higher costs, some homeowners would switch to grass species
that grow more slowly, to alternative ground cover or to flagstones.
Others would simply mow every other week, or every 10 days, instead of
weekly…Few of us change our sheets and towels
at home every day. Hotels and motels could reduce the frequency of
changing sheets and towels from every day to, say, every third day for
continuing guests, perhaps offering a price discount to guests who
accept this arrangement.
And how about this for a pathetic attempt to get the environmentalists on board the anti-immigration bandwagon?
Less frequent lawn mowing and washing of hotel sheets and towels would reduce air, noise and water pollution in the bargain.
Note how reduction in services, denied in paragraph one, has now become a virtue!
Chiswick also points out that:
With the higher cost of low-skilled labor, we would import more of some
goods, in particular table-quality fruits and vegetables for home
consumption (as distinct from industrial use) and lower-priced
off-the-rack clothing.
That is correct, but this is another reason why restricting the immigration of low-skilled workers will not much increase the wages of low-skilled Americans.
Chiswick makes statements in his op-ed like the "increase in low-skilled workers has contributed to the stagnation of wages for all such workers." But unlike my Open Letter he never tries to quantify these assertions. Yet he surely knows that an 8% decline is on the high end of such estimates and a zero percent decline on the low-end.
Quantifying, however, would put the immigration and wages issue in perspective which is that immigration is at worst a small contributor to the decline in the wages of low-skilled workers. Indeed, economists are agreed that technology, not immigration, is by far the more important force which is why any serious attempt to raise the wages of low-skilled workers must begin with efforts to raise skills.
In my TCS article I said:
Immigration makes immigrants much better off. In the normal debate
this fact is not considered to be of great importance — who cares
about them? But economists tend not to count some people as worth more
than others, especially not if the difference is something so random as
where a person was born.
Chiswick, however, lets the economists down. He never once mentions the benefits of immigration to the immigrants.
In defense of the university
I have never been much of a university-basher, and in my new book Good and Plenty I attempt to explain why:
The university also injects diversity into the broader societal discovery process. Faculty tenure is based on two principles: free inquiry and intellectual autonomy. Taken together, these principles also could be described by the less favorable sounding phrase "lack of accountability." A tenured faculty member simply is not very accountable to deans and department chairs. This absence of accountability, while it comes under heavy criticism, is part of the virtue of the university. The university works by generating and evaluating ideas according to novel and independent principles, relative to the rest of society. Direct commercial considerations drive most sources of ideas in society, including corporate research and development, commercial culture, advertising, and celebrity culture. The university is an alternative and complementary mechanism for producing and evaluating social ideas. In the university professors are, at least in theory, insulated from direct commercial pressures. Most academic rewards are determined by peer evaluation.
Tenure and non-accountability work especially well for a process that depends on intellectual or creative superstars. The average producer might use lack of accountability to shirk, or to pursue self-indulgent ideas of little value. But the superstars will use lack of accountability to pursue their own visions without outside hindrance. We like to think of "creative freedom" as good, and "lack of accountability" as bad, but in fact they are two sides of the same coin. If most of the value added comes from the superstars, the gains from their freedom may exceed the losses from the shirking of the average producer. Given that most artistic experiments are failures, effective discovery procedures often succeed by supporting the extremes, rather than trying to generate a good outcome in every attempt.
Since we should evaluate institutions as a bundle, the excesses of the university, which include conservatism and overspecialization, should be seen as part of a broader picture. All methods of producing ideas involve biases. The question is whether these biases tend to offset or exaggerate the other biases — usually commercial — that are already present in the broader system. To the extent the biases are offsetting, the benefits of the university are robust. Counterintuitively, one of the great virtues of commercial society is its ability to augment non-commercial sources of support, including the university. Academic institutions, whatever their particular failings, increase the diversity of the social discovery process, including in the creative arts.
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Thomas Schelling, new Nobel Laureate
Note my biases, Schelling was my mentor at Harvard.
Tom is an unassuming guy, who looks as if he sells Hush Puppies at the local mall. But he is one of the sharpest people you will meet. He delivers the killer point, argument, or anecdote with striking regularity. Even in his eighties he is sharp as a tack. He has a deeply philosophical and humanistic approach to economics. What are his contributions?
1. The idea of precommitment. You can be better off, either individually, or institutionally, if your choices are limited in advance. This is a key idea in monetary policy (many governments seek to tie the hands of their central banks), the theory of bargaining (try buying a used car, and see if the salesman doesn’t talk about "the boss upstairs"), and industrial organization (firms may invest in capacity to precommit a market position and deter rivals). You find the precommitment frequently in movies as well, especially where kidnapping is involved; what is that Mel Gibson flick again? Here is an excellent Jon Elster piece on the ambiguities of precommitment. Here is my piece on similar themes.
2. The paradox of nuclear deterrence. Ever see Dr. Strangelove? Tom developed the idea that deterrence is never fully credible (why retaliate once you are wiped out?). The best deterrent might involve precommitment, some element of randomness, or a partly crazy leader. I recall Tom telling me he was briefly an advisor to Kubrick. Here is someone else’s essay on the paradox of deterrence.
3. Focal points. People coordinate by directing their attention to commonly recognized points of importance. If a meeting time for lunch is not specified, you might assume 12 noon. If someone mentions "economics blog," of course MarginalRevolution.com comes to mind. And so on. Much social coordination occurs in this manner. I once asked me class: "If you had to hide a one hundred dollar bill in a book, so that your friend would find it, but you could not announce the book, which volume should you choose?" Many said The Bible but of course the game theorist picks Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict.
4. Behavioral economics and the theory of self-constraint. One of Tom’s best pieces is "The Mind as a Consuming Organ," American Economics Review, 1984. Here is a lecture of his on self control. Will Wilkinson cites a bit of that essay. Tom made it respectable for economists to talk once again about happiness.
Tom has been an underrecognized father of behavioral economics. His work on addiction, memory, and personal control was pathbreaking and came nearly twenty years before the "behavioral revolution" in economics. He analyses the tricks people use to control their wills. For Tom, self-control is often a more important determinant of happiness than is wealth. Tom once told me his work sprung from his own attempts to quit smoking, which he did finally manage. Several times.
5. The economics of segregation. Tom showed how communities can end up segregated even when no single individual cares to live in a segregated neighborhood. Under the right conditions, it only need be the case that the person does not want to live as a minority in the neighborhood, and will move to a neighborhood where the family can be in the majority. Try playing this game with white and black chess pieces, I bet you will get to segregation pretty quickly. Here is a demo model for playing the game.
6. Later in his life Tom turned his attention to issues of global warming. He has been skeptical of the idea that global warming involves insuperably high economic costs. Here is a short essay by Tom on the topic. Here is his excellent AER piece on the same topic.
Tom is not well-represented on the web, here is one photo, but the associated links are mostly broken. Here is Tom’s piece on Hiroshima. Here is the Wikipedia bio, note Wikipedia already reports he won the prize. Here is a great interview with Tom. Here is Tom’s work on the Copenhagen Consensus.
A few bio facts: Like so many other prestigious American economists, Tom worked for the Marshall Plan in its early stages. He spent most of his career at Harvard, first in the economics department, later in the Kennedy School. He had close ties with the Rand Corporation. He was an advisor to Kissinger during the Vietnam War but quit in disgust. He is now emeritus at University of Maryland. I have always interpreted Tom’s political views as those of a conservative Democrat.
Here is a piece I wrote with Dan Klein and Timur Kuran, Salute to Schelling: Keeping it Human. In this piece, recently published, we asked the Committee to give the Prize to Tom. Here are Tom’s books, they are all worth reading.
Comments are open, you can add more; Tom could have won more than one Nobel Prize for all his contributions.