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William Vickrey
Sign in to saveAlso known as William Spencer Vickrey, William S. Vickrey
Canadian-American professor of economics and Nobel Laureate (1914-1996)
William Vickrey was a Canadian-American economics professor who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on how people make decisions when they have incomplete information. His work has been influential in understanding auctions, pricing, and economic incentives in real-world situations.
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Nobel Prize
- The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel1996
“for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information”
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- William
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Canada
- Place of birth
- Victoria
- Place of death
- New York City
- Occupation
- researcher
- Position held
- president
- Educated at
- Phillips Academy
- Employer
- Columbia University
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Field of work
- economy
- Image
- William Vickrey.jpg
- Residence
- New York City
Show 10 more facts
- member of
- Econometric Society
- writing language
- English language
- date of birth
- 1914-06-21
- date of death
- 1996-10-11
- name in native language
- William Spencer Vickrey
- cause of death
- heart failure
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- manner of death
- natural causes
- interested in
- economics
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Encyclopedic overview
William Spencer Vickrey (21 June 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Canadian-American professor of economics. 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.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Vickrey” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.