[Academic Activity][Economics] Professor James Alexander Mirrlees, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Gave Lecture at Academia Sinica

[Academic Activity][Economics] Professor James Alexander Mirrlees, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Gave Lecture at Academia Sinica (Chinese Version)

Academia Sinica Newsletter (2010/09/30) Professor James A. MIRRLEES, Nobel Laureate in Economics Sciences, gave two lectures at Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University on October 8 and 9, 2010, respectively. The lecture at Academia Sinica was entitled “The Optimal Allocation of Risk”. Members of the media are welcome to attend.

Professor MIRRLEES, together with Dr. William VICKREY, received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1996 “for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information”. Problems of “asymmetric information” deal with situations where different decision makers have different information. The most well-known aspect of “asymmetric information” tackled by Professor MIRRLEES was the problem of how a government should set income tax rates so as to optimize revenue without stifling the incentive to work, a theory known as “optimal income taxation”. As an adviser to the British Labor Party in the 1960s and 1970s, MIRRLEES started his work on income taxation with the assumption that the government should take money from the rich and give it to the poor. To his surprise, however, his models and equations suggested that the top marginal tax rate for high-income earners should only be 20 percent. MIRRLEES’s work on “asymmetrical information” became the standard in economics and was used by later economists in a variety of applications.

Professor MIRRLEES is currently Master of Morningside College at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He previously served as a Professor of Political Economy and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (1995-2004), where he is now Emeritus Professor. Professor MIRRLEES has been a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences since 1999. He is also a fellow of numerous academies and learned societies. He served as the president of the Econometric Society between 1983 and 1984 and the Royal Economic Society between 1989 and 1992. Professor MIRRLEES was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998.

Event: Academia Sinica Special Lecture by Professor Sir James A. MIRRLEES
Title: The Optimal Allocation of Risk
Time: 15:00 – 17:00
Date: Friday, October 8, 2010
Venue: 1st Conference Room, 2F, Center of Academic Activities, Academia
Sinica, No.128, Sec.2, Academia Road, Nangang District, Taipei City
Organizer: College of Social Sciences, National Taiwan University
Center for China Studies, National Taiwan University
Academia Sinica
Speaker: Professor Sir James A. MIRRLEES
Master of Morningside College at The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, University of Cambridge
Moderator: Dr. Fan-Sen WANG, Vice-President, Academia Sinica


Media Contacts:
James YANG, International Affairs Office, Central Office of Administration, Academia Sinica
(Tel) +886-2-2787-1405, (Fax) +886-2-2785-8944
E-mail: kaichieh@gate.sinica.edu.tw
Fang-Hsun YEH, Public Affairs Office, Central Office of Administration, Academia Sinica
(Tel) +886-2-2789-8820, (Fax) +886-2-2782-1551, (M) 0922-036-691
E-mail: hongsum@gate.sinica.edu.tw
Mei-Hui LIN, Public Affairs Office, Central Office of Administration, Academia Sinica
(Tel) +886-2-2789-8821, (Fax) +886-2-2782-1551, (M) 0921-845-234
E-mail: mhlin313@gate.sinica.edu.tw


Reference:
Academia Sinica Newsletter 2010/09/30

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