Nearly 75 years ago, John Hicks introduced and formalized the concept of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour and its relation to derived demand. The resulting formula has proven very useful in understanding the derived demand for productive factors, the distribution of factor incomes, and Marshall's Four Rules. This short paper notes that a slip occurred in the original derivation, presents a modified formula, and shows that Marshall's First Rule is no longer generally valid.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1742.
Find related papers by JEL classification: A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
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