ABSTRACT
In this paper we try to assess the relevance of Sir John Hicks’s contribution in the field of income distribution and profit determination, with particular reference to the controversy that raged between the two Cambridges (UK vs. Mass. USA) in the Sixties, with Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor and Luigi Pasinetti on one side, and James Meade, Franco Modigliani and Paul Samuelson on the other. We show that Hicks’s work on Capital and Growth (published in 1965) opened up new ways of looking at the whole issue, in particular by introducing the hypothesis of a differentiated interest rate, or rate of growth of capital stock. Hicks’s theory, moreover, provides a general background against which the issue of overlapping generations may be suitably viewed. In sum, Hicks’s contribution has pioneered numerous new lines of research in theoretical economics decades before these were pursued.
