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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 is the first thing Schelling says a social behavior model can be?

2. What does Schelling say a proposition has to have in order to be true?

3. What does Schelling say provides clear evidence of black versus white areas in American cities?

4. What does Schelling say discrimination is?

5. Why can the Golden Gate Bridge charge a double toll for traffic in one direction without fear of being unfair?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What would the demographic consequences be, if parents could select the traits of their children?

3. What aspect of the history of nuclear weapons does Schelling describe?

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

5. In what way does a thermostat mirror the behaviors of many systems, in Schelling's analysis?

6. How does Schelling use mathematical formulations to express his economic models of behavior?

7. What limitations does Schelling describe that restrict the effect of economic analysis of social behaviors?

8. What factors does Schelling say social scientists have to account for in models of human behavior?

9. How does Schelling say technology has changed the number of genetic outcomes that can result when a man and a woman conceive?

10. How is nuclear arms control a self-fulfilling prophecy, in Schelling's analysis/

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which has a bigger effect on society, the choices people can see, or the choices they make that cannot be seen?

Essay Topic 2

How has Schelling's economic modeling changed in an age of data mining and news aggregators and other digital techniques for gathering and sifting enormous amounts of information? Is it that more people have access to aggregate patterns? Or that new kinds of control are possible now?

Essay Topic 3

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?

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This section contains 929 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample