Rice - School of Social Sciences

About Social Sciences

Sewall Hall

The School of Social Sciences is the newest school at Rice and recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. It also has the smallest number of faculty of the four main schools. But despite this, it graduates the most majors

of any school, with over a third of Rice

undergraduates choosing a major in the social sciences. At the graduate level, four of our five departments have Ph.D. programs, and the fifth has a post-doc program. All of these programs achieve excellence by concentrating on select areas for education and research.

The School of Social Sciences contains five departments: Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. In addition, there are three interdisciplinary majors: Cognitive Sciences, Managerial Studies, and Policy Studies. Students in Cognitive Sciences are engaged in the multidisciplinary study of the mind. Managerial Studies provides an understanding of the environment in which business and other organizations exist, and of the tools used by managers. Policy Studies students learn to analyze and evaluate public policy and gain an understanding of the policy making process.

There are approximately seventy faculty in the school, and about ninety graduate students. Although the school contains only about fifteen percent of the fulltime faculty at Rice, they consistently win between a third and a half of all university-wide teaching awards.

Get to Know...

Dagobert L. “Bob” Brito
Peterkin Professor of Political Economy

Professor Dagobert L. Brito has been teaching at Rice University for more than 22 years. His research focuses on economics of defense, energy economics, disengagement in the Middle East, optimal tax theory and economics of law.

Brito and Dr. Michael Intriligator's paper, “Conflict, War and Redistribution”, analyzed the circumstances under which conflict leads to the outbreak of war using a model incorporating both the redistribution of resources as an alternative to war and imperfect information. It is the first paper demonstrating that a war could be an outcome of rational behavior.

In 1995, Brito and Professor Peter Hartley, also a faculty member of Rice, published a paper on consumer rationality and credit cards, arguing the rationality of borrowing on credit cards at high interest rates. This work influenced the bankruptcy bill which is passed in 2005.

His research extends to the strategies of regulating energy markets as well. He and Juan Rosellon, who received his PhD at Rice, applied the Little-Mirrlees rule to pricing natural gas and liquid petroleum gas in Mexico. Now he is working on economics of solar power under sponsorship of Baker Institute.

Brito enjoys being involved with public policy. He has a close relationship with the Mexican government. Recently, he was elected a corresponding member of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (Mexico Academy of Sciences). He also serves as external professor at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A. C., Mexico.

For fun, he, his wife Patricia, and their dog Boris fly to their house in Colorado in their Cessna Turbo-Centurion.