A highly influential textbook by the distinguished public finance and development economist Ursula Kathleen Hicks, ‘a work which not only broke new ground among the available texts on public finance, but still remains one of the best elementary texts in the field. This is evidenced by the fact that since its original appearance in 1947 it has run into several editions and has been reprinted ten times. Her long and deep interest in achieving a synthesis between normative and positive public finance reaches the high-water mark here’ (W.L. David, Introduction to Public finance, planning and economic development essays in honour of Ursula Hicks).
Hicks, née Webb, married the Nobel Prize winning economist John Richard Hicks in 1935, with whom she would also collaborate on numerous works on public finance, its theory and its application to various countries.