William Vickrey

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William Spencer Vickrey (June 21, 1914, Victoria, British Columbia - October 11, 1996, New York State) was a Columbia University professor, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics just three days before he died.

Vickrey was awarded the prize jointly with James Mirrlees for research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. An example of this is the situation where, for instance, the insured know more about their health than their insurer.

He also did important work in congestion pricing, the idea 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. His theory was later partially put into action in London. Ironically, he died of a heart attack while sitting in his car in a traffic jam.

Vickrey attended Yale College and did his graduate work at Columbia University. The Vickrey auction is named after him.

[edit] See also

• Road pricing
• London congestion charge
• Electricity market
• List of economists
• List of economics consultancies and think tanks
• Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

[edit] External link

• Nobel Laureate Biography of William Vickrey