John Hicks Econ 490 fall 2017 Blog

Opportunism is an assumption that claims that human beings are generally self-interested and that they will take advantage of others and/or circumstances when possible. However, sometimes people don’t act opportunistically while they had the chance to do so. In my ECON490 class we discussed different reasons why this happens, such as good citizenship, unethical behavior and the fact that a lot of people are patient. The reverse, so that someone takes advantages of you, can also happen. In my following example of opportunism this was also the case. Moreover, I could also act opportunistically but I didn’t. After graduating at high school, I chose to take a gap year instead of going straight to university. My brother, who is two years older than me, did the same two years before and went to Cambridge in England. So I followed his path and lived for 6 months in Cambridge too. The main reason why my brother didn’t go to university after graduating was because of my dad. He ...

It is great to see and experience the big difference between student life in Amsterdam and here in Champaign. In Amsterdam, student life is very separated from social life while here at UIUC everything is based on the university. One example is the fact that freshman are required to live their first year in undergraduate halls. That would be impossible in The Netherlands because universities doesn’t even have campuses and they do not own student living properties at all. My university in Amsterdam is totally separated from the housing possibilities of students. Furthermore, Amsterdam experiences very high demand on the housing market, which results in the fact that many students still live with their parents back home. Even upon graduation, more than 30% of the students are still living with their parents. Another example is the entire campus vibe. My university in Amsterdam is just one big building surrounded by other big business buildings on the Zuidas, Amsterdam. Once leav...

John Hicks; The John Keynes in Macro Economics? John Hicks John Richard Hicks, one of the most influential economists ever, was born in 1904 in Warwick. After high school he enrolled at the University of Oxford. To finance his studies he received mathematical scholarships. He started as a math student in Oxford, but went to London School of Economics to work as a labor economist. As a labor economist, around 1930, Hicks published his early work in the field of labor economics. And this was just the beginning... In my opinion, John Hicks his two most famous publications are his IS-LM model and his book Value and Capital. Before discussing his IS-LM model, I would like to briefly point out his book Value of Capital, which was published in 1939. It was a major contribution to micro-economics and it was based on the theory of ordinal utility and distinguishes between the substitution effect and the income effect for an individual. Besides, Value and Capital has much mo...