ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hicksian demand function

Okay, so imagine you have a big bag of candy and you love to eat candy. But there's a problem: you only have a limited amount of money to spend. So you have to decide how much candy you can buy with the money you have.

The Hicksian demand function helps you figure out how much candy you can afford to buy based on the price of the candy and your income. It's called "Hicksian" because it was developed by a guy named John Hicks who was really good at math.

Basically, the Hicksian demand function tells you how much candy you would buy at different prices, assuming that your income stays the same. It's like a little chart that shows how many pieces of candy you could afford to buy at different prices.

Let's say that you make $5 a week and candy costs 50 cents a piece. That means you could buy 10 pieces of candy with your $5. But if the price went up to 75 cents a piece, you might only be able to afford 6 or 7 pieces.

The Hicksian demand function takes into account things like your income, the price of goods, and your preferences for those goods. It helps economists understand how people make decisions about what to buy and how much to buy based on their limited resources.

So, the Hicksian demand function is basically a tool to help people figure out how much of something they can afford to buy given their income and the price of the thing they want to buy.