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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What consequence does Schelling say might affect people sitting closer to the stage?

2. What does Schelling say the measles story is an example of?

3. What does Schelling say about the underlying motivation for segregation?

4. What does Schelling say is the result if aggregate behavior results from a small number of variables?

5. How does the heating system parallel human behavior in Schelling's example?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the critical-mass model?

2. What does Schelling say is the best use for the models he is describing?

3. Under what circumstances does Schelling say that chromosomal selection could be beneficial?

4. What behavior does discrimination allow Schelling to model?

5. What is the behavioral model that would make arms reduction a self-fulfilling prophecy?

6. What would be the consequence of parents preferring boys to girls, in Schelling's analysis?

7. What example does Schelling use to illustrate an externality?

8. What factors influence how effective a proposition is, in Schelling's analysis?

9. What is one consequence Schelling describes of parents being able to choose the sex of their children?

10. How does Schelling describe nuclear weapons in his final chapter?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Schelling describes underlying assumptions as being difficult to account for in economic models of social behavior. What methods does Schelling use for making this accounting, and where does his social science begin to need psychological language for unconscious behaviors? In other words, what behaviors do Schelling's models still fail to account for, and is there a point beyond which these economic models cannot go, in estimating individual behavior or accounting for micromotives behind macrobehavior? Will there always be an ultimate 'theory of no guarantees' behind the models?

Essay Topic 2

Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior is grounded in the opposition between the individual's feelings and motives, and the aggregate society's behavior. How does Schelling resolve the tension or opposition between these two things? Can a social scientist analyze aggregate behavior from an aggregate perspective? What happens to the individual in the model for the society? Does this cause a problem for Schelling or any social scientist as someone who is describing phenomena that can only be seen in the aggregate?

Essay Topic 3

Write a detailed review of Micromotives and Macrobehavior. What are the book's main themes and preoccupations? What are its methods? How does it achieve its intentions? Where does it fail to?

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