Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance. These entitlements would be transferable and a market in them would be developed.

Congestion pricing gives a signal to users to adjust their behaviour or to investors to expand the service in order to remove the constraint. Vickrey was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with James Mirrlees for their research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. He died in Harrison New York in 1996 from heart failure.

William Spencer Vickrey (21 June 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Canadian professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. The announcement of the prize was made just three days prior to his death; his Columbia University economics department colleague C. Vickrey was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with James Mirrlees for their research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.