Nepedia
Back to Discover
Fluent Reader
📖

John Hicks

society Maturity 13-18 death dying war conflict Next article →

This article covers sensitive topics: death_dying, war_conflict. Parents can manage visibility in Parental Controls.

Sir John Hicks was a very important British economist. He lived during the twentieth century. His work helped people understand how money and markets work. He is famous for many big ideas in economics. One idea is called consumer demand theory. This looks at how people choose what to buy. He also created the IS–LM model in 1937. This model helps explain how an economy stays in balance. It looks at money, consumption, and investment.

His work often used math to solve hard problems. He looked at how people and businesses act. He studied how one good affects the price of another. This is part of a big idea called general equilibrium theory. He also helped explain the difference between two effects. These are the substitution effect and the income effect. He showed how these change what people buy. He even helped define what income really means. He wanted to know how much a person can spend safely.

John Hicks was born in 1904 in Warwick, England. His father, Edward Hicks, worked for a local newspaper. His mother was Dorothy Catherine. John went to school at Clifton College. Later, he studied at Balliol College at Oxford University. He used math scholarships to pay for his studies. At first, he focused on math and history. In 1923, he began studying philosophy, politics, and economics. This was a new subject at Oxford at that time.

He had a very long and busy career. He taught at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1935. He also taught at Cambridge University. From 1938 to 1946, he was a professor at the University of Manchester. He later returned to Oxford to teach again. In 1939, he published his most famous book. It was called Value and Capital. In 1972, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He shared this huge honor with Kenneth J. Arrow.

Many people still study his ideas today. Some math rules are even named after him. For example, the Hicksian demand function uses his name. He was also made a knight in 1964. This is a special honor in the United Kingdom. He was a very generous person too. In 1973, he gave his Nobel Prize money to a library. This library was at the London School of Economics. He died in 1989 in the village of Blockley.

392 words

Where will your curiosity go next?

Keep exploring at your chosen reading level.

More to explore

🔬 Go deeper

More advanced topics to explore

🪜 Step back

Simpler topics to build understanding

What is Nepedia?

A free, ad-free encyclopedia for children. Every article is written at five reading levels, so the same page works for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old — use the level switcher above to see this one change. No account needed to read.