An Inaugural Conjecture

In his inaugural lecture of 1953 Hicks conjectured that any uniform expansion of a country's production set would benefit its trading partner. Corden and Ikema later provided conditions on that country's consumption which, if added to Hicks' condition on production, would validate Hicks' conjecture. However neither related his conditions to the fundamental determinants of the partner's welfare, viz. the preferences, technology, and resources of the expanding country. Later again, Kemp and Wan showed that the conjecture is valid if preferences in the expanding country are homothetic. The present note provides less severe necessary and sufficient conditions for the Hicksian outcome