OBITUARY

Professor Sir James Mirrlees obituary

Modest yet influential Scottish economist who thought that the phone call awarding him the Nobel prize in 1996 was a hoax
Sir James Mirrlees passing on his wisdom to young economists at St Petersburg State University in 2010
Sir James Mirrlees passing on his wisdom to young economists at St Petersburg State University in 2010
ALAMY

James Mirrlees’s first thought was that he was the victim of a prank. “My second thought was to check the [phone] call was genuine,” he said. Having ascertained that it was real, he was “full of glee” at sharing the Nobel prize in economics in 1996. “My subject has always been economics and human welfare,” explained the softly spoken Scot. “It is a delight to have been able to contribute to that field and to have it recognised.”

The award was for Mirrlees’s work on “information asymmetry”, which is about making transactions with imperfect knowledge. “That just means not knowing as much as you would like,” he explained. Information asymmetry is where one party, the buyer or the seller, knows more about the goods or