During his time at Oxford, he published papers oneconomic models for which he would eventually be awarded his Nobel Prize. The papers centred onasymmetric information, which determines the extent to which they should affect the optimal rate of saving in an economy. Among other results, he demonstrated the principles of "moral hazard" and "optimal income taxation" discussed in the books ofWilliam Vickrey. The methodology has since become the standard in the field.[citation needed]
Mirrlees and Vickrey shared the 1996Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information".[3]
Mirrlees was also co-creator, with MIT ProfessorPeter A. Diamond, of the Diamond–Mirrlees efficiency theorem, which was developed in 1971.[4]
"A New Model of Economic Growth"(with N. Kaldor),RES, 1962
"Optimum Growth When Technology is Changing",RES, 1967
"The Dynamic Nonsubstitution Theorem",RES, 1969
"The Evaluation of National Income in an Imperfect Economy",Pakistan Development Review, 1969
Manual of Industrial Project Analysis in Developing Countries, Vol II: Social Cost Benefit Analysis (withI.M.D. Little), 1969
"An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation",RES, 1971[1]Archived 2 April 2022 at theWayback Machine
"Optimal Taxation and Public Production I: Production Efficiency" (with P.A. Diamond),AER, 1971
"Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules"(with P.A. Diamond),AER, 1971
"The Terms of Trade: Pearson on Trade, Debt, and Liquidity", inThe Widening Gap (ed. Barbara Ward), 1971)
"On Producer Taxation",RES, 1972
"Further Reflections on Project Analysis" (with I.M.D. Little),Development and Planning. Essays for Paul Rosenstein-Rodan (eds. Bhagwati and Eckaus, 1972
"Fairly Good Plans" (with N.H. Stern),Journal of Economic Theory, 1972
"Aggregate Production with Consumption Externalities" (with P.A. Diamond),QJE, 1973
"The Optimum Town",Swedish Journal of Economics, 1972
"Population Policy and the Taxation of Family Size",Journal of Public Economics, 1972
"Agreeable Plans" (with P.J. Hammond) and "Models of Economic Growth" (introduction), inModels of Economic Growth (ed. Mirrlees and Stern), 1973
Project Appraisal and Planning for Developing Countries (with I.M.D. Little), 1974
"Optimal Accumulation under Uncertainty: the Case of Stationary Returns to Investment", inAllocation under Uncertainty (ed. J. Dreze), 1974
"Notes on Welfare Economics, Information and Uncertainty", inEssays in Equilibrium Behavior under Uncertainty (eds. M. Balch, D. McFadden, and S. Wu), 1974
"Optimal Taxation in a Two-Class Economy",Journal of Public Economics, 1975
"Optimum Saving with Economies of Scale" (with A.K. Dixit and N.H. Stern),RES, 1975
"A Pure Theory of Underdeveloped Economies, using a Relationship between Consumption and Productivity", inAgriculture in Development Theory (ed. L. Reynolds), 1975
"The Desirability of Natural Resource Depletion" (with J.A. Kay), inThe Economics of Natural Resource Depletion (ed. D.W. Pearce), 1975
"The Optimal Structure of Incentives and Authority within an Organization",Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 1976
"On the Assignment of Liability: the Uniform Case" (with P.A. Diamond),Bell Journal of Economics, 1975
"Private Constant Returns and Public Shadow Prices"(with P.A. Diamond),RES, 1976
"Optimal Tax Theory: A Synthesis",Journal of Public Economics, December 1976
"Implications for Tax Rates", inTaxation and Incentives, 1976
"Arguments for Public Expenditure" inContemporary Economic Analysis (eds. Artis and Nobay), 1979
"Social Benefit-Cost Analysis and the Distribution of Income",World Development, 1978
"A Model of Optimal Social Insurance with Variable Retirement" (with P.A. Diamond),Journal of Public Economics, 1978
"Optimal Taxation in a Stochastic Economy: A Cobb-Douglas Example" (with P.A. Diamond and J. Helms),Journal of Public Economics, 1980
"Optimal Foreign-income taxation",Journal of Public Economics, 1982
"Project Appraisal and Planning Twenty Years On" (with I.M.D. Little), inProceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics 1990 (eds. Stanley Fischer, Dennis de Tray and Shekhar Shah), 1991
"Optimal Taxation of Identical Consumers when markets are incomplete" (with P.A. Diamond), inEconomic Analysis of Markets and Games (ed. Dasgupta, Gale, Hart and Maskin), 1992
"Optimal Taxation and Government Finance" inModern Public Finance (eds. Quigley and Smolensky), 1994
"Welfare Economics and Economies of Scale",Japanese Economic Review, 1995
"Private Risk and Public Action: The Economies of the Welfare State",European Economic Review, 1995
^Peter A. Diamond and James A. Mirrlees (1971). "Optimal Taxation and Public Production I: Production Efficiency,"American Economic Review, 61(1), pp.8–27Archived 18 June 2015 at theWayback Machine (press+). _____ (1971). "Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules,"American Economic Review, 61(3), Part 1, pp.261–278Archived 14 August 2013 at theWayback Machine (press+).
