William Spencer Vickrey (born
June 21,
1914 in
Victoria, British Columbia - died
October 11,
1996 in
New York State) was a
Columbia University professor, whose
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was announced 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. William Vickrey authored the seminal
1961 Journal of Finance paper, "Counterspeculation, auctions and competitive sealed tenders.", which was the first instance of an economist using the tools of
game theory to understand auctions. In the paper, which has been described as being two decades ahead of its time, Vickrey not only derives several auction equilibria, but also provides an early revenue equivalence result. The
revenue equivalence theorem remains the centrepiece of modern auction theory. The
Vickrey auction is named after him.
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