Welfare, Incentives, and Taxation

James A. Mirrlees is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College. He was previously Edgeworth Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford (1968-95). In 1996 he won the Nobel Prize for Economics for fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. His research interests are optimal income taxation; policy implications of imperfect rationality; and principal/agent situations with multidimensional choice variables.

James Mirrlees' special gift is to bring new perspectives to the understanding of major economic issues, economic growth and the choice of taxes. The importance of asymmetric information in the optimality of taxes was one of his greatest contributions, the study of different aspects of the role of increasing returns in economic growth another. Drawing these contributions, scattered over many journals, into a single volume will remind of the power of Mirrlees's analysis and make reference that much easier.

• PART I: WELFARE ECONOMICS ; PART II: TAX THEORY ; PART III: PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ; PART IV: CONTRACT THEORY ; PART V: GROWTH THEORY ; PART VI: DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS