Media

Nobel Laureate in Economics to speak at HKU On "Ending Poverty in China"

23 Feb 2007

 

Poverty has been greatly reduced in China in the last twenty-five years. Are new economic policies required to further reduce poverty? Should it and could it be reduced faster? How exactly has the reduction come about? Professor Sir James Mirrlees, Nobel Laureate in Economics 1996, will address these questions in a public lecture entitled "Ending Poverty in China" at The University of Hong Kong. The lecture is jointly organized by Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education of The University of Hong Kong.

Media representatives are invited to cover the event, the details are:

Date: 26 Feb 2007 (Monday)
Time: 5-6pm
Venue: Rayson Huang Theatre, HKU

Professor Sir James Mirrlees developed an interest in Chinese economic development in the 1980s when he was involved in the establishment of the Chinese Economic Association in Britain. His research interests have involved growth theory and the theory of contracts. More recently his research has focused on welfare economics, contract theory, public finance and development economics. In 1996 Professor Sir James Mirrlees was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, for contributions to the theory of asymmetric information.

Professor Sir James Mirrlees graduated in Mathematics in 1957 from the University of Edinburgh and has worked at Cambridge University as assistant lecturer and a teaching fellow of Trinity College before being elected to a Chair in mathematical economics in Oxford. He was elected to the Professorship of Political Economy in Cambridge in 1995. Since 2002, he has been Distinguished Professor-at-Large of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently Distinguished Professor at the University of Macau and Laureate Professor at Melbourne University. At various times, he has been a visiting professor at MIT, Berkeley and Yale.