Happy New Year

I wish you all a wonderful 2006.

To help you keep those resolutions, take a look at my latest NYT column, which applies to New Year's resolutions some insights from Thomas Schelling's fascinating and important work on "self-command." I highly recommend his book Choice and Consequence. (Amazon is offering a discount for buying C&C along with Schelling's better-known The Strategy of Conflict.)

Back in 1992, Professor Postrel and his colleague Dick Rumelt published an article arguing that the problem of self-command helps explain why people voluntarily submit themselves to organizational hierarchy (even when capital investment is not an issue) rather than simply trading in markets. The full article isn't online, but a shorter version is here.

Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 01, 2006