Sir James Alexander Mirrlees (born 5 July 1936) is a Scottish economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.Mirrlees considered to be one of the pioneers of the new area of research related to the different access to the information of different agents during decision-making. He was knighted in 1998.
Background
Born in Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, Mirrlees was educated at the University of Edinburgh (MA in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1957) and Trinity College, Cambridge (Mathematical Tripos and PhD in 1964 with thesis title Optimum planning for a dynamic economy), where he was a very active student debater. One contemporary, Quentin Skinner has suggested that Mirrlees was a member of the Cambridge Apostles along with fellow Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during this period. Between 1968 and 1976, Mirrlees was a visiting professor at MIT three times. He taught at both Oxford University (1969–1995) and University of Cambridge (1963- and 1995-).
During his time at Oxford he published papers on economic models for which he would eventually be awarded his Nobel Prize. They centred on situations in which economic information is asymmetrical or incomplete, determining the extent to which they should affect the optimal rate of saving in an economy. Among other results, they demonstrated the principles of "moral hazard" and "optimal income taxation" discussed in the books of William Vickrey. The methodology has since become the standard in the field.
Mirrlees and Vickrey shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information".
Mirrlees is also co-creator, with MIT Professor Peter A. Diamond of the Diamond-Mirrlees Efficiency Theorem, developed in 1971.
Mirrlees is emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He spends several months a year at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is currently the Distinguished Professor-at-Large of The Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as University of Macau. In 2009, he was appointed Founding Master of the Morningside College of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Mirrlees is a member of Scotland's Council of Economic Advisers. He also led the The Mirrlees Review, a review of the UK tax system by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
His students have included eminent academics and policy makers Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professor Huw Dixon, Lord Nicholas Stern, Professor Anthony Venables, Sir John Vickers.
Education
He passed the examination at age eleven to decide who could go on to the high school, the Douglas Ewart. In these days there were prizes every year. By the age of fourteen he had acquired a strange enthusiasm for mathematics, having managed to acquire a book called Teach Yourself Calculus, and done so. He studied mathematics hard and everywhere. At this age he planned to be a professor of mathematics.
In Scotland, unlike England, one does a wide range of subjects all through school, and for the final school examination. Mirrlees passed this exam at the age of sixteen, and the final school year was devoted to odds and ends, except that there were two special mathematics papers that one could do in that final year.He took them a year early, successfully, catching the attention of the inspector from the Scottish Education Department who suggested Mirrlees should try for the Cambridge scholarship. It emerged that Cambridge was not for young Scots, in the normal way, since the government grants provided to pay university fees and some subsistence, could not be used outside Scotland . The one exception was the scholarship. If someone won a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge in the college scholarship examinations, a supplementary grant would then be given.
Mirrlees with his mathematics teacher got past examination papers and tried to do them. It was exciting, but not with all Mirrlees can deal in time. The weekend Mirrlees should have gone to Cambridge to take the examination he was rushed to the nearest serious hospital, seventy miles away, with peritonitis.
When he entered the University of Edinburgh he found the mathematics so easy he was able to develop a range of other interests - in literature, music, art and philosophy. His study of Utilitarian moral philosophy led him to think about fundamental questions. His intensive political discussions with his classmates led him to ponder questions of welfare economics. When he went on to Cambridge he found absorbing interest in issues such as poverty and the distribution of wealth - so much so that he chose to take his PhD in economics. He was moved by the moral questions of his day. The mathematics undergraduate degree at Cambridge had three parts, or triposes. In Cambridge you can go to lectures in any subject, without formality. Mirrlees took full advantage. When Part III mathematics came, Mirrlees worked hard, and there was a lot he wanted to do besides mathematics. The result was good enough to allow him to go on to research had I wanted to do so, but I did not. He began study economics or, to be exact, sociology. He began hisreseach in the sphere of economics in order to get the degree “Doctor of Philosophy”. Fellowship dissertation for Trinity concerns the “contributions to a theory of economic planning”. There was little mathematics in it.
In November of 1961 an idea came to Mirrlees how the amount of uncertainty should affect the optimal rate of saving in an economy. He thought of a neat way of modelling the question. But his work was interrupted by two other researches. Mirrlees went to M.I.T. in order to get more deep knowledge.
Some years later Mirrlees had worked out the theory of efficiency-wage equilibria in 1962.
Trinity retaliated almost instantly by offering Mirrlees a teaching fellowship in economics to be taken up in 1963, when Sen would be leaving to return to India. The thesis was duly submitted in September 1963, on Optimum Accumulation Under Uncertainty. Ken Arrow was visiting one of his two examiners. He tried very hard to find the mistakes and failed.
Religion
On religion, his father was a church Elder buthis mother had little interest in it; J. Mirrlees doesn't think she ever went to church after dad died;J. Mirrlees do remember him getting worked up about religious issues such as whether you should have separate cups for communion wine or a single cup, which was tearing the congregation apart at some time in my youth; James' father cared about that issue entirely on health grounds and not on theological; James took Church of Scotland Christianity very much for granted; he was confirmed and would have gone to church most Sundays; James does remember that I listened to the sermons; at some stage when at university in Edinburgh he got drawn into the Student Christian Movement though it would not have taken much of his time there; looking back I really don't understand because now his view is that it is all nonsense, but when James was in Cambridge he was also a member of the Student Christian Movement and was Pressident at one time; in Oxford in the 1970's he realized that he didn't understand why he had ever thought there was a case for belief; James doesn't believe but it would be wrong to say that he doesn't believe it is helpful for some people; he has no objection to listening to grace or going to Chapel to listen to good music; James Mirrlees think there is something helpful about the ceremonials, memorial services, funerals