RAND / rational choice / personalities

I have for some reason always felt closer to (even if less well-versed in) economists than to political scientists. The rational choice paradigm that was so dominant at UCLA when I was doing my Ph.D. work there is certainly to a large extent responsible for that. But also a number of personal encounters with. When I came back to RAND Santa Monica in 2000(for what unfortunately only turned out to be one year), I happened to be in a room in the old 5-floor building that was only a few doors away from the office of Tom Schelling - who would go on to win the 2005 Nobel prize winner in the field of Economics. Schelling, whose did much of his seminal work at RAND in the 50s that he published when he went to Harvard as 'Strategy of Conflict' apparently maintained some affiliation with RAND for much of his career.

expertise and interests were extremely broad who still spent some time at RAND as a visiting scholar. He gave a talk on smoking and on climate change. Also discussed with him

Tom Schelling . I knew his primarily as a military strategist and a applied game theorist, but that summer I found out a number of his other interests. This had a big impact on me - taking some of the most important 'strategic topics' and just applying the full range of analytical tools + 'big picture'

6 by 4 index cards, methodically surgically went through the various arguments pro and con. evidence based, (pluri!)theoretically conversant - but most of all creativity-inspired and policy-focused. And most important of all - in readable English.

"a central figure in the Rand "oral tradition" that gave shape to strategic thinking as it emerged in the 1960s and--it is still about all we have--the 1970s." - never heard about this "oral tradition" but looking back I have to admit that that 'oral tradition' at RAND may have taught me more than I ever realized. The old RAND building had been constructed by to maximize the probability of chance encounters.

pdf

And indeed - whether by design or by default - that did tend to happen.

'military strategist' - systems analysis "The germination date was August, 1945; and the movement reached a kind of maturity from which it never recovered, when it moved in 1961

into the Establishment, the Departments of State and Defense. The idea stage was about over then, although books reflecting earlier thought and work continued to appear in the early 1960s."

“mat discourse,” see Kubo (2006).Kubo, Michael, Constructing the Cold War Environment: The Architecture of the RAND Corporation, 1950–2005, thesis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2006.

This reminds me of Jack Hirshleifer