- Joan Robinson
Infobox_Economist
school_tradition =Post-Keynesian economics
color = #B0C4DE
image_caption =
name = Joan Robinson
birth = birth date|1903|10|31
death = death date and age|1983|8|5|1903|10|31
nationality = flag|Great Britain
field =Monetary economics
influences =John Maynard Keynes ,Piero Sraffa
opposed =
influenced =Nicholas Kaldor
contributions =Cambridge growth theory Joan Violet Robinson (
October 31 ,1903 inSurrey -August 5 ,1983 inCambridge ) was a post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her knowledge ofmonetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She is the daughter ofMajor-General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, 1st Baronet.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 alecturer in economics at theUniversity of Cambridge . She joined theBritish 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 ofGirton 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 withJohn 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 theGreat 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 sellermonopoly .In 1942 Robinson's "An Essay on Marxian Economics" famously concentrated on
Karl Marx as aneconomist , 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 theSoviet Union as well asChina . 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 theEconometric 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 hermagnum opus , "The Accumulation of Capital", which extended Keynesianism into the long-run. Six years later, she published another book aboutgrowth theory , which talked about concepts of "Golden Age" growth paths. Afterwards, she developed theCambridge growth theory withNicholas Kaldor . During the 1960s, she was a major participant in theCambridge capital controversy alongsidePiero 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 . [http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/9870]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) withJohn 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."
*"The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism."ee also
*
International economics
*Macroeconomics
*Wealth condensation
*Welfare economics References
* Harcourt, G. C. (1995) Obituary: Joan Robinson 1903-1983, Economic Journal, Vol. 105, No. 432. (Sep., 1995), pp. 1228-1243.
* Emani, Zohreh, , 2000. "Joan Robinson" in Robert W. Dimand et al eds. "A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists", Edward Elgar.
* Pasinetti, Luigi L. (1987), "Robinson, Joan Violet," "The ", v. 4, pp. 212-17, Macmillsn.External links
* [http://www.economyprofessor.com/theorists/joanrobinson.php Life and economics of Joan Robinson]
* [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/robinson.htm Biography]
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