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