Econ 309 Schelling Tipping Point

At the K-12 levels, education is generally provided very locally. American neighborhoods are very segregated by race and income. Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling had a clever "tipping point" model of this where people don't want to be "too much" in the minority. The results from this model can lead to surprising levels of segregation.

• • Tim Harford explains Schelling's tipping point model in a two-minute YouTube video

  • Schelling's tipping point model as downloadable software

  • Schelling's tipping point model shown through "Second Life"

  • Bill Easterly doubts that people really display this sort of behavior.

  • However, Card, Mas, and Rothstein find some pretty impressive results, in graphs starting on page 39 of this paper.

  • For amusement: It's probably a good thing that the military didn't listen to Schelling during the Vietnam War.

    • Or maybe it's good they did?