Hicks' thread (out of the equilibrium labyrinth)

The work of John Hicks is an unending source of inspiration for many economists and an unsolved dilemma for most historians of economic thought. In these pages, a reconstruction of the continuity principle, the red thread of his evolution as a theorist is proposed. Hicks’ research was inspired by a program of analyzing a process of change from an out-of-equilibrium perspective. Non-measurable risk and the time-to-build being the natural issues at stake in actual economic behavior, he made the transaction costs the kingpin of his technique of thinking. These allowed him to dispense with any essential reference to equilibrium conditions and to revolve around the sequential relationship of learning and planning, which lays at the core of his “Continuation theory”. In fixing its building blocks, he was primed to allow for equilibrium assumptions as far as a vantage point on out-of-equilibrium dynamics was attainable.