Economic Nobel For "Asymetric Information"

STOCKHOLM: The third of six Nobel prizes was presented Tuesday to Briton James Mirrlees and American William Vickrey for their work in economic theory. The two men did ground-breaking writing on"asymetric information," a condition which occurs when buyer and seller have differing information about a transaction. The condition has broad implications in analyzing systems from insurance and credit markets to taxation schemes. Mirrlees used the theory to study how high to set income taxes without discouraging workers and investors or encouraging tax evasion. Karl Gustaf Loefgren, a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, called the men's work an "important contribution which set up the formal methodology which has been put into textbooks of micro-economic theory as a standard fact." Vickrey, a professor at Columbia University, has made news for another, more unconventional economic stand: advocating that the government take on more debt. "The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression," he told reporters. -->