Questions

John Hicks is often taken to be the apostle of economic efficiency who taught us how to think about markets and prices and their efficacious functioning. That diagnosis is not mistaken, especially given the role of Value and Capital (1939a), which is one of the defining books of contemporary economics and a pioneering exposition of what an equilibrium in a competitive market achieves. There is another part of Hicks's thinking, however, that made him worry about whether the focus on efficiency could capture adequately the diverse functions of transactions and markets in society and the enabling opportunities they could generate. He also wondered whether efficiency is all that economists should be interested in and whether economists are right to base their policy recommendations so heavily on the efficiency features of economic arrangements. In looking for a different – and in some ways more radical – interpretation of the role of economists, Hicks was deeply involved in the social importance of liberty and freedom.

Hicks did, in fact, address these issues explicitly, and yet the general understanding of him among economists tends, by and large, to be based on neglecting these parts of his work and commitment. This chapter is an attempt to assess Hicks's concerns about values other than efficiency, including his appreciation of problems of economic evaluation and the reach and relevance of social choice theory.