Remembering Sir James Mirrlees

James Mirrlees was the Scottish economist who was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1996 along with William Vickery. Hos area of research concerned “optimal taxation” the rate at which government taxes would bring in the most income without providing a disincentive for labor or investment. He was also interested in “asymmetric information” transactions, where one party has more information than the other and this imbalance affects the nature of the transaction. He also took an interest in the politics and nature of Third World economies.