12 Facts About William Vickrey

William Spencer Vickrey was a Canadian-American professor of economics and Nobel Laureate.

William Vickrey died while traveling to a conference of Georgist academics that he helped found and never missed once in 20 years.

William Vickrey was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

William Vickrey was the first to use the tools of game theory to explain the dynamics of auctions.

William 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.

In public economics, William Vickrey extended the Georgist marginal cost pricing approach of Harold Hotelling and showed how public goods should be provided at marginal cost and capital investment outlays financed with land value tax.

William Vickrey wrote that replacing taxes on production and labor with fees for holding valuable land sites "would substantially improve the economic efficiency of the jurisdiction".

William Vickrey further argued that land value tax had no adverse effects and that replacing existing taxes in this way would increase local productivity enough that land prices would rise instead of fall.

William Vickrey made an ethical argument for Georgist value capture, noting that owners of valuable locations still take local public goods, even if they choose not to use them, so without land value tax, land users have to pay twice for those public services.

William Vickrey 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.

William Vickrey was a Quaker and a member of Scarsdale Friends Meeting.

William Vickrey died in Harrison, New York in 1996 from heart failure.