Ursula Kathleen Hicks (; 17 September 189616 July 1985), styled as Lady Hicks upon her marriage, was an Irish-born economist and academic.

Early life

She was daughter of William and Isabella Webb, born in Dublin on 17 September 1896. She was educated at Roedean and

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...

, University of Oxford. She studied and lectured at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

. She married fellow academic Sir

John Hicks Sir John Richards Hicks (8 April 1904 – 20 May 1989) was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economic ...

in 1935.

Academic career

Ursula Hicks was a renowned public finance and development economist. Hicks was a co-founder of the ''

Review of Economic Studies ''The Review of Economic Studies'' (also known as ''REStud'') is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering economics. It was established in 1933 by a group of economists based in Britain and the United States. The original editorial team ...

'' and Managing Editor from 1933 to 1961. She was a Fellow of

Linacre College Linacre College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the UK whose members comprise approximately 50 fellows and 550 postgraduate students. Linacre is a diverse college in terms of both the international composition of its m ...

, Oxford, where a building is named after her. Her 1946 paper argued against the economic usefulness of the distinction between

direct tax Although the actual definitions vary between jurisdictions, in general, a direct tax or income tax is a tax imposed upon a person or property as distinct from a tax imposed upon a transaction, which is described as an indirect tax. There is a dis ...

es and

indirect tax An indirect tax (such as sales tax, per unit tax, value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST), excise, consumption tax, tariff) is a tax that is levied upon goods and services before they reach the customer who ultimately pays the i ...

(as to who the nominal payer is) versus taxes on

income Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For ...

and expenditures (outlays), a distinction now recognized in

national accounting National accounts or national account systems (NAS) are the implementation of complete and consistent accounting techniques for measuring the economic activity of a nation. These include detailed underlying measures that rely on double-entry ...

. Lady Hicks received an Honorary Fellowship at the

Institute of Social Studies The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam is an independent and international graduate school of policy-oriented critical social science. ISS was established in 1952 by Dutch universities and the Neth ...

in 1967.

Selected publications

* 1946. "The Terminology of Tax Analysis," ''Economic Journal'', 56(221),
p. 38
50. * 1947, 3rd ed., 1968. ''Public Finance,'' Cambridge Economic Handbooks. * 1954, revised 1958. British Public Finances: Their Structure and Development 1880 - 1952, Oxford University Press * 1961. ''Development from Below''. Clarendon Press. Openin
paragraph
& revie
excerpt.
* 1978. ''Federalism: Failure and Success: A Comparative Study. Oxford. Revie
excerpt.

References

Sources

* Alan Peacock, 9872008. “Hicks, Ursula Kathleen (1896–1985)," ''

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'' (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Diction ...

''.

External links

Profile at Institute of Social Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hicks, Ursula British economists British women economists 1896 births 1985 deaths Alumni of the London School of Economics Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Wives of knights