For more than two decades, the theory of markets with asymmetric information has been a vital and lively field of economic research. Today, models with imperfect information are indispensable instruments in the researcher's toolbox. Countless applications extend from traditional agricultural...

I wrote "The Market for 'Lemons,'" (a 13-page paper for which I was awarded the Prize in Economics) during my first year as assistant professor at Berkeley, in 1966-67.* "Lemons" deals with a problem as old as markets themselves. It concerns how horse traders respond to the natural question: "if...

William S. Vickrey was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1914. His elementary and secondary education were in Europe and the United States, with graduation from Phillips Andover Academy in 1931. He received a B.S. in mathematics from Yale in 1935, followed by graduate work in economics at...

Prize Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1996.

Interview with Professor James A. Mirrlees at the 1st Meeting of Laureates in Economic Sciences in Lindau, Germany, September 1-4, 2004. Interviewer is freelance journalist Marika Griehsel.

Newton Stewart is a town of two thousand people in the beautiful centre of Galloway, in the southwest of Scotland. My father came there in 1934, newly married, to be a teller in one of the six banks. In 1936 I was born, in a cottage across the river in the neighbouring village of Minnigaff....

Prize Lecture, December 27, 1996

Information for the Public, The Prize in Economic Sciences 2007. Buyers and sellers sometimes haggle too hard and therefore fail to trade. Desirable joint projects are sometimes not undertaken because the projects' beneficiaries fail to agree how the costs should be shared. Sickness insurance,...

I was born in Gary, Indiana, at the time, a major steel town on the southern shores of Lake Michigan, on February 9, 1943. Both of my parents were born within six miles of Gary, early in the century, and continued to live in the area until 1997. I sometimes thought that my perignations made up...

Nobel Prize Lecture