J. R. Hicks - Böcker

Value and Capital An Inquiry into some Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory

Critical Essays in Monetary Theory

When A Revision of Demand Theory was first published in 1956, the late Harry Johnson described it as "elegant in the extreme, probably the last word there is to be said on this aspect of demand theory." This landmark work by Nobel Prize winner J.R. Hicks is now available again.

This book, first published in 1973, takes up an important approach to capital which had gone out of fashion. It is being reissued in paperback in recognition of the recent renewed interest in this approach. The 'Austrian' theory of capital concentrates on the inputs and outputs in the productive process, and has an advantage over more modern theories of economic dynamics in that it is more naturally expressible in economic terms: the production process over time is taken as a whole, rather than disintegrated. However, this approach had been largely abandoned because it seemed to be unable to deal with fixed capital. Sir John overcomes this problem here by allowing for a sequence of outputs, and the consequences for dynamic economics are profound and novel.

Capital and Growth was published in 1965, and rapidly established itself as a landmark in economic theory. In this volume, Sir John takes his earlier work and examines it critically for its present-day value. The result is a substantially reworked book based on the first and best part of his 1965 publication. The theme, now more clearly identified, is a comparative study of the economics of change, and brings in many of Hicks's subsequent developments and refinements - in particular a 'neo-Austrian' theory of capital which he developed in Capital and Time(1973). A new chapter on Keynes's methods has been added. The sum is a more complete classification of the family of models appropriate for analysing dynamic economics.