An Accountant Among Economists: Conversations with Sir John R. Hicks

Abstract

Sir John Hicks (1904-1989) has left an indelible impression on modern economic discourse. His Value and Capital (1939) stood as a model for neoclassical microeconomics as economists know it today. His condensation of Keynes's General Theory in the form of the IS / LM diagram became the core of Keynesian macroeconomics. In 1972, he was awarded the Nobel Prize (together with Kenneth Arrow) for his pioneering contributions to modern demand and welfare theory. Later, after his retirement from Oxford University in 1965, he seemed to change course. The older Hicks seemed to have drifted from the mainstream that the younger Hicks had helped to set into motion. The first of two conversations took place in Oxford in early December 1986. In June 1988 we talked again. I went to see Hicks in Blockley, a small village north of Oxford.