James A. Mirrlees, William S. Vickrey, George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz

James Alexander Mirrlees was born in Minnigaff, Scotland on July 5, 1936. He received a master's degree in math and natural philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and a doctorate in economics from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a professor of economics at Nuffield College, Oxford from 1968 until 1995. He was a professor of political economy at Trinity College from 1995 until his retirement in 2003.

He and William Vickrey shared the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for their research into decision-making. Mirrlees received it for his economic model for tax policies that would produce the maximum revenue while being applied most fairly. He was knighted in 1997. He died from a brain tumor on August 29, 2018 at the age of 82.

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