Economist James Mirrlees, Nobel laureate and professor-at-large at Chinese University of Hong Kong, dies aged 82
CUHK vice chancellor says Scottish economist’s passing ‘a great loss’ for the university and the world
Nobel laureate and economics scholar James Mirrlees, a distinguished professor-at-large at Chinese University for the past 16 years, has died at the age of 82.
A pioneer in optimal tax theory, Mirrlees was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1996, for his contributions to the theory of incentives under asymmetric information. He shared the prize with Canadian-born American economist William Vickrey.
Mirrlees was the master of Morningside, one of the university’s nine colleges on its Sha Tin campus, and had lived there from the time it was founded in 2006 until “recently”, a university spokeswoman said.
The economist died at his home in Cambridge, Britain, on Wednesday.
CUHK vice chancellor and president Rocky Tuan Sung-chi paid tribute to Mirrlees as “a brilliant economist, whose outstanding contributions to economic theory had profound impact on global economic development”.
James Mirrlees was a giant in the field of public finance, yet he was easily approachable and had no airs