IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpmi/0203003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Note on the Hicksian Concept of Income

Author

Listed:
  • Ajit Zacharias The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Abstract

Empirical studies of intertemporal dynamics of individual income, distribution of personal income, and growth and distribution of national income are all based on statistics that rely on some concept of income. The dominant one today appears to be the so-called Haig-Simons-Hicks (HSH) concept of income. I examine the foundations of this concept in Hicks's Value and Capital and conclude that there is nothing "Hicksian" about the HSH concept of income. Furthermore, I argue that Hicks's failure to distinguish between definition and calculation, and the consequent lack of adequate ex post concepts, make it impossible for his income definitions to serve as a basis for income accounting. JEL Codes: D30, B21, B31.

Suggested Citation

  • Ajit Zacharias The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2002. "A Note on the Hicksian Concept of Income," Microeconomics 0203003, EconWPA.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0203003
    Note: Type of Document - Word; prepared on IBM PC; to print on HP;
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/mic/papers/0203/0203003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/mic/papers/0203/0203003.ps.gz
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/mic/papers/0203/0203003.doc.gz
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smeeding, Timothy M & Weinberg, Daniel H, 2001. "Toward a Uniform Definition of Household Income," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 47(1), pages 1-24, March.
    2. Musgrave, R.A., 1985. "A brief history of fiscal doctrine," Handbook of Public Economics,in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-59 Elsevier.
    3. Eisner, Robert, 1989. "Divergences of Measurement and Theory and Some Implications for Economic Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 1-13, March.
    4. Hicks, J. R., 1975. "Value and Capital: An Inquiry into some Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198282693.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jean-François Casta & Olivier Ramond, 2010. "De la construction du résultat comme mécanisme de gouvernance : quelques pistes de recherche," Post-Print halshs-00681206, HAL.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4415 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    income; Hicks; HSH;

    JEL classification:

    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
    • B21 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Microeconomics
    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0203003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (EconWPA). General contact details of provider: http://econwpa.repec.org .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.