William Vickrey

William Vickrey
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Born	(1914-06-21)21 June 1914 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Died	Harrison, New York, USA
Nationality	Canada
Institution	Columbia University
Field	Public economics
School or tradition	Post Keynesian economics
Alma mater	Columbia University Yale University
Influences	Robert Murray Haig Harold Hotelling John Maynard Keynes
Influenced	Jacques Drèze Harvey J. Levin Lynn Turgeon
Contributions	Vickrey auction Revenue equivalence theorem Congestion pricing
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1996)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

William Spencer Vickrey (21 June 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Canadian-born professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. 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, becoming the only Nobel laureate born in British Columbia. The announcement of the prize was made just three days prior to his death; his Columbia University economics department colleague C. Lowell Harriss accepted the posthumous prize on his behalf (there are only three other cases where a Nobel Prize has been presented posthumously).

Early years

Vickrey was born in Victoria, British Columbia and attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. After obtaining his B.S. in Mathematics at Yale University in 1935, he went on to complete his Masters in 1937 and doctoral studies in 1948 at Columbia University, where he would remain for most of his career.

Career

Vickrey was the first to use the tools of game theory to explain the dynamics of auctions. In his seminal paper, Vickrey derives several auction equilibria, and provides an early revenue-equivalence result. The revenue equivalence theorem remains the centrepiece of modern auction theory. The Vickrey auction is named after him.

Vickrey worked on congestion pricing, the notion that roads and other services should be priced so that users see the costs that arise from the service being fully used when there is still demand. Congestion pricing gives a signal to users to adjust their behaviour or to investors to expand the service in order to remove the constraint. The theory was later partially put into action in London.

In public economics, Vickrey extended the marginal cost pricing approach of Harold Hotelling.

Vickrey's economic philosophy was influenced by John Maynard Keynes and Henry George. He was sharply critical of the Chicago school of economics and was vocal in opposing the political focus on achieving balanced budgets and fighting inflation, especially in times of high unemployment.

Vickrey had many graduate students and protegés at Columbia University, including the economists Jacques Drèze, Lynn Turgeon, and Harvey J. Levin.

Personal life

Vickrey married to Cecile Thompson in 1951. He was a Quaker and a member of Scarsdale Friends Meeting. He died in Harrison, New York in 1996 from heart failure.

Selected works

• "Counterspeculation, Auctions, and Competitive Sealed Tenders", Journal of Finance, 1961. The paper originated auction theory, a subfield of game theory.

See also

• Vickrey auction
• Road pricing
• London congestion charge
• Electricity market

External links

• Nobel Laureate Biography of William Vickrey
• IDEAS/RePEc

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