CHAPTER I -- Section 5

In this short section Hicks sets out the goal of constructing a theory of consumer's demand, starting from the indifference map alone.  He points out that Pareto's work will be of no further help, as Pareto himself did not rework Marshall's conclusions in the light of his significant discovery about indifference maps.  He then notes that an important article on this topic had been published by the Russian economist and statistician E. E. Slutsky, but that it had remained relatively unknown -- probably due its having been published in Italian, as well as the fact that it was published in 1915 (i.e. during war time).  Value and Capital contains "the first systematic exploration of the territory which Slutsky opened up," according to Hicks.

It is interesting to note the role of Hicks's ability to read Italian in advancing his work.  In addition to being able to read Slutsky's article, Hicks was able to read Pareto's work in the original Italian.  In this interview Hicks relates an interesting story of how he came to know about Pareto's work.  A colleague of his at the London School of Economics, Hugh Dalton, advised him that since he read Italian he should read Pareto.  Dalton had first learned about Pareto while spending several months in a hospital in Italy after being wounded toward the end of World War I (he was serving in a British force sent to help the Italians on the Austrian front).  He wasn't seriously wounded, so he had time to learn to speak and read Italian.  Dalton was a Cambridge-trained economist, so he searched for Italian books on economics and found Pareto's Manual of Political Economy.