System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!William Vickrey, Briefly a Laureate
There are many people who deserve to win a Nobel simply for kicking the bucket. But for the rest of us it is preferable to die after winning the Svensk laurels. William Vickrey had only two days of glory. after sharing the prize for economics. (And does anybody think his Times obit would have been half its 50 column inches without the blessing of the Swedish Academy?)
One account had him being woken up early in the morning by a call informing him of his prize.
After expressing satisfaction he turned over and returned to slumber.
It's interesting that he had the perspicuity to die when he did because Vickrey was said to be the ultimate absent minded professor. But then, he was the master of the incremental advantage.
Vickrey bestrode minutia. He made proposals to charge different amounts for subways depending on the volume of traffic–the lower the demand the lower the price. According to his theory, classic applied microeconomics, this would eliminate rush hour crowding. Vickrey even argued that at certain stations, in the middle of the night, it would save money to collect no fares at all.
He had similar bright ideas for tunnel passages, parking meters, and many other situations. He devised an efficient solution to his own transportation requirements by riding into Manhattan by train or car and then rollerskating across town to the campus on the Upper West Side.
As he was a tall, well-padded figure, this presented quite a spectacle for students. In 1959 Vickrey was given a hearing by a Congressional Committee looking at Washington’s traffic congestion problem. There was, Vickrey said, a “discreet silence” afterwards. His ideas were put into practice overseas, however, in Britain and Singapore.
A more subtle application is the “Vickrey auction” in which sealed bids are submitted and the winner–the one who submits the highest bid–pays the price of the second highest bid. Such a procedure theoretically makes bidders tell the truth about what something is worth to them.
Inspiring to the few remaining liberals in America in this election season, Vickrey told the Times that he’d once voted for Norman Thomas and planned to vote this year for Ralph Nader. Viva a leftie economist, even if he is dead.
He was at Columbia for 60 years. He died in an odd way. He was discovered slumped over the wheel of his car on the highway. No foul play was suspected.
