William Vickrey
William Vickrey | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 June 1914 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | 11 October 1996 (aged 82) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Yale University (BS) Columbia University (MA, PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Carl Shoup Robert M. Haig |
| Influences | Henry George Harold Hotelling John Maynard Keynes |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Social choice theory and mechanism design |
| School or tradition | Georgist |
| Institutions | Columbia University |
| Doctoral students | David Colander Jacques Drèze |
| Notable ideas | Vickrey auction Revenue equivalence theorem Congestion pricing |
| Awards |
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| Website | |
William Spencer Vickrey (21 June 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Canadian-American professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. He was a lifelong faculty member at Columbia University. A theorist who worked on public economics and mechanism design, Vickrey primarily discussed public policy problems. He originated the Vickrey auction, introduced the concept of congestion pricing in networks, formalized arguments for marginal cost pricing, and contributed to optimal income taxation. James Tobin described him as "an applied economist’s theorist, as well as a theorist’s applied economist.”
Vickrey was awarded the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Mirrlees for their research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. Vickrey never personally received the Prize; it was announced just three days prior to his death.