Nobel Prize winner leaves behind £1m in will
● Wealth included property in Cambridge and an art collection
Scottish Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir James Mirrlees has left a fortune of more than £1 million in his will.
Sir James, who was born in the small town of Minnigaff in Dumfries and Galloway, taught economics at both Oxford and Cambridge universities during his distinguished career.
He jointly won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1996 for work on asymmetric information – the study of transactions in which some parties involved know more than others.
Sir James was also a member of the Scottish Government’s council of economic advisers, which was established by the SNP in 2007.
He died from a brain tumour aged 82 in August 2018.
His recently published will revealed he had an estate valued at £1,004,587 at the time of his death. His wealth included property in Cambridge, where he had lived for many years, and an art collection.
Sir James instructed that his estate should be left to his wife Patricia and his two children from a previous marriage.
During his career, he served as the Edgeworth Professor of Economics and fellow of Nuffield College in Oxford from 1968 to 1995 before becoming professor of political economy at Cambridge in 1995. In 2002 he was also appointed distinguished professor-at-large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
In 2010, Sir James chaired a review of taxation for the Institute
of Fiscal Studies that suggested the abolition of stamp duty should be accompanied by council tax reform.
In 1996, he got a phone call from a stranger saying he had won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Sir James assumed it was one of his friends faking a Swedish accent to pull a prank.
It took him a while to find a number for the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm, called them back and heard that it was true. “I was full of glee,” he recalled.
Following his death, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was among those to pay tribute to him. She said: “Like many people of great intellect, Jim had a way of conveying the essence of any economic issue in a manner which was clear, thoughtful and accessible.
“He had a wonderfully dry sense of humour and served on the council with distinction.”
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said he was “one of the greatest and most influential economists of his generation”.
Sir James is said to have enjoyed spending his spare time reading detective novels and playing the piano.
He was knighted in 1997 and awarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2009.