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Joan Violet Robinson (October 31, 1903 in Surrey – August 5, 1983 in Cambridge) was a post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her knowledge of monetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She is the daughter of Major-General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, 1st Baronet and was married to fellow economist Austin Robinson.
nson was educated at St. Alex's Girls' School, Britain, and at Girton College, Cambridge. Immediately after graduation in 1925, she married economist Adam Robinson.
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Quotations
It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
Encyclopedia
Joan Violet Robinson (October 31, 1903 in Surrey – August 5, 1983 in Cambridge) was a post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her knowledge of monetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She is the daughter of Major-General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, 1st Baronet and was married to fellow economist Austin Robinson.
Biography
Robinson was educated at St. Alex's Girls' School, Britain, and at Girton College, Cambridge. Immediately after graduation in 1925, she married economist Adam Robinson. In 1937, she became a lecturer in economics at the University of Cambridge. She joined the British Academy in 1958 and was then elected fellow of Newnham College in 1962. In 1965 she was given the position of full professor and fellow of Girton College. In 1979, just four years before she died, she became the first female fellow of King's College.
Initially a supporter of neoclassical economics, she changed her mind after getting acquainted with John Maynard Keynes. As a member of the "Cambridge School" of economics, Robinson assisted with the support and exposition of Keynes' General Theory, writing especially on its employment implications in 1936 and 1937 (it attempted to explain employment dynamics in the midst of the Great Depression).
In 1933, in her book, The Economics of Imperfect Competition, Robinson coined the term "monopsony," which is used to describe the buyer converse of a seller monopoly.
In 1942 Robinson's An Essay on Marxian Economics famously concentrated on Karl Marx as an economist, helping revive the debate on this aspect of his legacy.
During the Second World War, Joan Robinson worked on a few different Committees for the wartime national government. During this time, she visited the Soviet Union as well as China. She developed an interest in underdeveloped and developing nations and contributed a lot that is now understood in this section of economics.
In 1949, she was invited by Ragnar Frisch to become the vice president of the Econometric Society but declined, saying she couldn't be part of the editorial committee of a journal she couldn't read.
In 1956, Joan Robinson published her magnum opus, The Accumulation of Capital, which extended Keynesianism into the long-run. Six years later, she published another book about growth theory, which talked about concepts of "Golden Age" growth paths. Afterwards, she developed the Cambridge growth theory with Nicholas Kaldor. During the 1960s, she was a major participant in the Cambridge capital controversy alongside Piero Sraffa.
Close to the end of her life she studied and concentrated on methodological problems in economics and tried to recover the original message of Keynes' General Theory. Between 1962 and 1980 she wrote many books to try and bring several economic theories to the general public. Robinson suggested developing an alternative to the revival of classical economics.
Also, Robinson made several trips to China, reporting her observations and analyses in China: An Economic Perspective (1958), The Cultural Revolution in China (1969), and Economic Management in China (1975; 3rd ed., 1976), in which she praised the Cultural Revolution, which caused significant damage to her reputation, and possibly cost her the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Major works
- The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933)
- An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942)
- Accumulation of Capital (1956)
- Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth (1962)
- Economic Philosophy: An essay on the progress of economic thought (1962)
Texts for the lay reader
- Economics is a serious subject: The apologia of an economist to the mathematician, the scientist and the plain man,(1932) Publisher: W. Heffer & Sons
- Introduction to the Theory of Employment (1937)
- An Introduction to Modern Economics (1973) with John Eatwell
- The Arms Race (1982), Tanner Lectures on Human Values
Quotes
- "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."
- "Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true."
- "I don't know mathematics, therefore I have to think"
- "The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism."
See also
Further reading
- Emani, Zohreh, , 2000. "Joan Robinson" in Robert W. Dimand et al eds. A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists, Edward Elgar.
- Harcourt, G. C. (1995) Obituary: Joan Robinson 1903-1983, Economic Journal, Vol. 105, No. 432. (Sep., 1995), pp. 1228-1243.
- Pasinetti, Luigi L. (1987), "Robinson, Joan Violet," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 4, pp. 212-17, Macmillsn.
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