Hicks’s thread (out of the equilibrium labyrinth)

The work of John Hicks is an unending source of inspiration for many economists and an unsolved dilemma for historians of economic thought. This article highlights the fact that Hicks’s peculiar perspective on the economic agent constitutes the sub-structure underlying his research path, and the common premise to his theories of markets, liquidity, capital, and risk. Hicks’s theory of the agent was intended to address the factual role of non-measurable risk (i.e. learning management) and was primarily concerned with the price and wealth effects that the transaction costs (costs of learning and moving) entail for learning-induced behaviours.