William Vickrey Quotes

William Vickrey — Canadian Educator born on June 21, 1914, died on October 11, 1996

William Spencer Vickrey was a Canadian-born professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. 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, becoming the only Nobel laureate born in British Columbia. The announcement of the prize was made just three days prior to his death; his Columbia University economics department colleague C. Lowell Harriss accepted the posthumous prize on his behalf... (wikipedia)

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

If unemployment could be brought down to say 2 percent at the cost of an assured steady rate of inflation of 10 percent per year, or even 20 percent, this would be a good bargain.

Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

Don't you think you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.