John hicks economist biography

In an attempt to clarify his thinking on growth and capital, which was then coming under fire in the Cambridge Capital Controversyfor Hicks's thoughts on the subject, see, John Hicks gave us his Capital and Growth in In this second magnum opus, Hicks hammered together his previous work on Keynesian, Harrodian, von Neumann and capital theory, with a good sprinkling of Lindahlinto an attempt at a comprehensive re-examination of growth theory.

His taxonomy - dividing models into fix-price and flex-price models - led him to further concerns, particularly the issue of the "traverse" the movement from one growth equilibrium to another. The first part of Capital and Growth was reworked and republished as Methods of Economic Dynamics in Hicks's concern with capital and growth throughout this time had left money out of the picture his article being an exception.

He addressed this in with his Critical Essays on Monetary Theory. There Hicks attempted a similar clarificiation and reworking of different theories of money. Sensing that these theories were not all quite right, he decided to fish for a better concept of money in economic john hicks economist biography, giving us his remarkable Theory of Economic History and his posthumous Market Theory of Moneywhich stressed the then-novel concept of a credit theory of exchange.

Nonetheless, capital and growth were still Hicks's primary concern. After a foray, Hicks turned to Austrian economics and single-handedly attempted a resurrection of Austrian capital theory in his book, Capital and Time. It was an attempt at formalizing an Austrian theory of capital which included both fixed and circulating capital. He then changed tack again and turned to exploring some important methodological issues which had been gathering during his work on growth and capital.

The first was time - and notably, the concept of irreversibility of time and causality in time. This was the body of his contribution to the Georgescu-Roegen festschrift and also his book, Causality in Economics. Here, in his Crisis in Keynesian Economicsin his paper "IS-LM: An explanation" and elsewhere,Hicks denounced the pretence, method and theory of the very Neoclassical-Keynesian Synthesis he had helped create and pointed the way to new developments along more Post Keynesian lines.

These and other works on methodology and the history of economics dominated the rest of his life. How is one to assess an economist whose legacy runs as wide and deep as that of John Hicks? The quintessential "economist's economist", Hicks cannot be said to have founded a "school" - unless one were to count the generation of eclectic and critical Neo-Walrasian theorists inspired by his visionary but careful work, such as MorishimaHahn and Negishi.

But Hicks was for the most part a lone thinker, part of every school and thus part of no school. If any, his school was "economics". Hicks himself claimed to have created no new economics but simply to have spent his life understanding, formulating and channeling the ideas of the Continental and Keynesian schools and his own historical, philosophical and practical reflections.

In a sense, he may have been right - but he analyzed and extended them in a meaningful and challenging way and thus transformed economics in the process.

John hicks economist biography

In many ways, Hicks's scholarly output is a perfect demonstration of how economics should be done: without partisanship for pet theories, without ideological quibbling, his own strictest critic, learning from all and everywhere, constantly searching for new ideas and staying glued to none. Macroeconomic model Publications in macroeconomics Economics Applied Microeconomics Political economy Mathematical economics.

Contributions to interpretation of income for accounting purposes [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Selected publications [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved on 28 July Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed. Oxford University Press. Subscription or UK public library membership required. Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne.

ISBN Hicks — Biographical. Retrieved on London School of Economics. Archived from the original on 14 June Retrieved 8 July Keynes and the 'Classics', A Suggested Interpretation". JSTOR Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. European Financial and Accounting Journal. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Hicks.

Wikiquote has quotations related to John Hicks. Simon Kuznets. Wassily Leontief. Sir Kenneth LeeBt. John Maynard Keynes. Shackle Pavlina R. Randall Wray. Taylor Michael Woodford Janet Yellen. Under Pareto efficiency developed by Vilfredo Paretoan outcome is more efficient if at least one person is made better off and nobody is made worse off. This seems a reasonable way to determine whether an outcome is efficient or not.

However, some believe that in practice it is almost impossible to make any large change such as an economic policy change without making at least one person worse off. Under ideal conditions, exchanges are Pareto efficient since individuals would not voluntarily entered into them unless they were mutually beneficial. Using Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, an outcome is more efficient if those that are made better off could "in theory" compensate those that are made worse off and lead to a Pareto optimal outcome.

Thus, a more efficient outcome can in fact leave some people worse off. The criterion is used because it is argued that it is justifiable for society as a whole to be better off, even though it involves making some worse off if this means a greater gain for others. The model describes the economy as a balance between three commodities: moneyconsumption, and investment.

It can be presented as a graph of two intersecting lines in the first quadrant. The horizontal axis represents national income or real gross domestic product and is labelled Y. The vertical axis represents the real interest rate, i. The IS schedule is drawn as a downward-sloping curve. The level of real GDP Y is determined along this line for each interest rate.

The LM john hicks economist biography is an upward-sloping curve representing the role of finance and money. The interest rate is determined along this line for each level of real GDP. The Hicks-Hansen model illustrates graphically Keynes ' conclusion that an economy can be in equilibrium with less than percent employment. This model eventually became the starting point of the Neo-Keynesian synthesis in economic systems which dominated in the mid-twentieth century.

It later came under criticism in the early s, when high inflation and growing unemployment seemed to be incompatible with the predictions of the system. In one of his later works, published inHicks criticized his own model, asserting it had omitted some crucial components of Keynes' arguments, especially those related to uncertainty. Among his other contributions to macroeconomics is the concept of "liquidity trap"—which happens in a stagnant economy, when the nominal interest rate is close or equal to zero, and when people start to keep their savings only in short-term bank accounts, expecting a recession.

Puttaswamaiah has gathered 25 contributors. Some were friends, colleagues, and students of Hicks. All are eminent in their own areas of Hicks' work.