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James Alexander Mirrlees (born July 5 1936,
Minnigaff, Scotland) is a Scottish economist and
winner of the 1996 Bank of Sweden Prize in
Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a very
active student debater. He taught at both Oxford
(1969-1995) and Cambridge (1995-). It was during
his time at Oxford that he published the economic
models and equations for which he would eventually
be awarded his Nobel Prize. They centred around
analysis of economic situations in which the
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.

Vickrey and Mirrlees shared the 1996 Nobel Prize
for Economics "for their fundamental contributions
to the economic theory of incentives under
asymmetric information".

Mirrlees is currently emeritus Professor of
Political Economy, Cambridge University|Professor
of Political Economy at the University of
Cambridge, and a fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge. He spends several months a year at the
University of Melbourne.