[PEN-L:6676] Re: [OPE-L:3366] Vickrey's death

[dkf2@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Duncan K. Foley)]

Michael Perelman suggested I post this to PEN-L:
>
>This was a very dramatic and turbulent week for Columbia.
>
>Vickrey was 82, but in the habit of driving himself to conferences in
>order to save the organizers money. He apparently had driven himself to an
>NBER conference on Cape Cod (about 6 hours one way from New York) the
>weekend before the Nobel announcement, and when he died was heading up to
>Cambridge (leaving his house in Hastings about 11 PM). His wife and others
>tried to dissuade him from this rather frenetic and stressful activity,
>but he would brook no restrictions.
>
>Vickrey was an unusual figure among economists. He was a Quaker and
>pacifist (served as a conscientious objector during WWII, for example.)
>His work was motivated by a hatred of waste. A typical project was his
>scheme to re-price New York subways by true marginal congestion cost.
>Despite the impeccable neoclassical logic of this kind of work, it went
>nowhere with politicians in Vickrey's lifetime. (I gather some European
>cities are gingerly considering the possibility of peak load road pricing,
>now, so maybe with the passage of time these concepts will reach
>fruition.) He remained a resolute Keynesian despite the changing of
>economic fashions. I recall him on several occasions characterizing
>unemployment as analogous to vandalism and inflation as analogous to
>embezzlement. He tried to use his Presidency of the AEA to lobby hard for
>more expansionary demand policies, but again without much resonance.
>
>There is some reason to believe that the Nobel excitement may have
>predisposed Vickrey to his fatal heart attack (though it's always
>impossible to know these things for sure, and he had a long history of
>heart problems already.) Everyone at Columbia was shocked and many people
>greatly saddened by his death. Some people thought this was a great way to
>go, and one prominent economist speculated on which of his colleagues and
>under what life circumstances would trade all but two days of life for the
>Nobel Prize in Economics. I found this rather bizarre myself.
>
>Duncan
>
>
>>Listmembers probably heard about the Nobel awards in economics the other
>>day ...
>>---------------------------
>>From: MScoleman@xxxxxxx
>>From:   jfwsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (William S. Brown (907) 465-6423/789-2448)
>>
>>One of my students who works for a radio station called to
>>tell me the details of Vickrey's death. Here is the AP flash:
>>
>>Nobel Death URGENT, take 3:     10-11 7:27 a
>>
>>
>>"Columbia says Vickrey was found unconscious and slumped
>>over the wheel of his car last night. He'd been traveling to an
>>academic conference when he was found, on a highway about
>>30 miles north of New Yrk City. He was 82."
>

Duncan K. Foley
Department of Economics
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
(212)-854-3790
fax: (212)-854-8947
e-mail: dkf2@xxxxxxxxxxxx