The mechanism and kinetics for the decomposition of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-2-butanone have been studied by using the ab initio RHF/3-21G method. The calculated activation barrier of the reaction is 249.6kJ/mol which is in reasonable agreement with the experimental data (222.2±3kJ/mol). The calculated results show that the decomposition is a concerted process with hydrogen transferring and bond breaking via a five-membered cyclic transition state. The thermal rate constants of the decomposition are obtained by calculating microcanonical probability fluxes through transition state1.