Nobel Laureate Sir James Mirrlees selected as 2016 AUCA Commencement Speaker

May 24, 2016

Sir James Mirrlees, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, has been chosen as the keynote speaker for AUCA’s commencement ceremony to be held on June 4, 2016.

Professor Mirrlees is a Scottish economist born in Minnigaff, a village in the southwest of Scotland. Mirrlees started his academic career as an undergraduate of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in 1954. Immediately following his time in Edinburgh, Mirrless completed a second degree in mathematics (a Mathematical Tripos) and a PhD in Economics both on scholarships at the University of Cambridge.

Mirrlees would go on to a full academic career teaching political economics at his alma mater as well as Oxford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Melbourne, Australia, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Macau. For the work he published while at Oxford on optimal savings rate for different levels of incomplete (“asymmetrical”) information, Mirrlees would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics with Professor William Vickrey of Columbia University in 1996.

According to Dr. Mirrlees, the economy must work for the benefit of countries. Thus, the tax system must be structured to decrease property inequalities. To this end, Mirrlees has dedicated his life to the study of social insurance, taxation, economic inducements, and so-called “moral hazards”.

Sir James Mirrlees visited the Kyrgyz Republic in 2012 on the invitation of the National Institute for Strategic Studies of Kyrgyz Republic (NISS KR). At that time Sir Mirrlees was awarded an Honorary Professorship from the Kyrgyz National University and was named an Honorary Academician by the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic.

For the first time, AUCA will be holding commencement in its completed new campus building. In addition to Sir James Mirrlees, several other distinguished guests from AUCA’s board of trustees, AUCA’s administration, and the Kyrgyzstani Ministry of Education will be speaking at the ceremony. This year, AUCA is slated to graduate over 220 students.

Note

Papers:  The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behavior, 1975.

He was knighted in 1998.

President of the Econometric Society (1982).
President of the International Atlantic Economic Society (1988-1989).

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