William Vickrey

William Vickrey
Born	(1914-06-21)21 June 1914 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Died	11 October 1996(1996-10-11) (aged 82) Harrison, New York, U.S.
Nationality	Canadian
Education	Yale University (BS) Columbia University (MA, PhD)
Academic career
Field	Social choice theory and mechanism design
Institution	Columbia University
School or tradition	Georgist
Doctoral advisor	Carl Shoup Robert M. Haig
Doctoral students	David Colander Jacques Drèze
Influences	Henry George Harold Hotelling John Maynard Keynes
Contributions	Vickrey auction Revenue equivalence theorem Congestion pricing
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1996) Guggenheim Fellowship (1955)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

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.”^[1]

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.