Joan Robinson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Joan V. Robinson)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:For-multi Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox economist

Joan Violet Robinson Template:Post-nominals (Template:Née Maurice; 31 October 1903 – 5 August 1983) was a British economist known for her wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. One of the most prominent economists of the century, Robinson incarnated the "Cambridge School" in most of its guises in the 20th century. She started out as a Marshallian, became one of the earliest and most ardent Keynesians after 1936, and ended up as a leader of the neo-Ricardian and post-Keynesian schools.

Early life and education

Before leaving to fight in the Second Boer War, Joan's father, Frederick Maurice, married Margaret Helen Marsh, the daughter of Frederick Howard Marsh, and the sister of Edward Marsh, at St George's, Hanover Square.<ref>Register of Marriages for St George's, Hanover Square, January–March 1899, volume 1a, p. 618.</ref> Joan Violet Maurice was born in Camberley, Surrey, in 1903, a year after her father's return from Africa. She was the third of five siblings.<ref name=ODNB>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Joan Maurice studied economics at Girton College, Cambridge.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She completed her studies in 1925 but due to Cambridge University's refusal to grant degrees to women until 1948, she did not formally graduate. Following her marriage to economist Austin Robinson the next year, she became known as Joan Robinson.<ref name=":0" />

The couple moved to India shortly after their marriage where Joan Robinson became interested in the relations between the British Raj and the Indian princely states and wrote a report on the subject. This time in India was a formative experience on Robinson, shaping her future research interest in both the country and her studies of developing economies.<ref name=":0" /> In 1928, the couple returned to Cambridge and Robinson started teaching in the early 1930s as a Junior Assistant Lecturer.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Career

Robinson crossed swords with the economist Marjorie Hollond, Girton's director of studies, over the teaching of economics. Robinson wanted to teach the latest economic theories whereas Hollond believed that they were as yet unproven.<ref name="mst">Template:Cite book</ref> In 1937, Robinson became a lecturer in economics at the University of Cambridge.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She joined the British Academy in 1958 and was elected a fellow of Newnham College in 1962. In 1965 she assumed the position of full professor and fellow of Girton College. In 1979, just four years before she died, she became the first female honorary fellow of King's College.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

As a member of "the Cambridge School" of economics, Robinson contributed to 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).

During World War II, Robinson worked on a few different committees for the wartime national government. During this time, she visited the Soviet Union as well as China, gaining an interest in underdeveloped and developing nations.

Robinson was a frequent visitor to Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, India. She was a visiting fellow at the Centre in the mid-1970s.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She instituted an endowment fund to support public lectures at the centre. She was a frequent visitor to the centre until January 1982 and participated in all activities of the centre and especially student seminars. Professor Robinson donated royalties of two of her books (Selected Economic Writings, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1974, Introduction to Modern Economics (jointly with John Eatwell), Delhi; Tata McGraw Hill, 1974) to CDS.

Robinson also 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 edn, 1976), in which she praised the Cultural Revolution. In October 1964, Robinson also visited North Korea, which was effectively a single-party Communist state, and wrote in her report "Korean Miracle" that the country's success was due to "the intense concentration of the Koreans on national pride" under Kim Il Sung, "a messiah rather than a dictator."<ref name="KwonChung2012">Template:Cite book</ref> She also stated in reference to the division of Korea that "[o]bviously, sooner or later the country must be reunited by absorbing the South into socialism."<ref name="harcourt">Template:Cite book</ref> During her last decade, she became more and more pessimistic about the possibilities of reforming economic theory, as expressed, for example, in her essay "Spring Cleaning."<ref name="harcourt2">Harcourt, p. 169.</ref>

Robinson was a strict vegetarian. She slept in a small unheated hut at the bottom of her garden all year round.<ref name=ODNB/>

Works

Joan Robinson in the 1920s

In 1933, her book The Economics of Imperfect Competition, Robinson coined the term "monopsony", which is used to describe the buyer converse of a seller monopoly. Monopsony is commonly applied to buyers of labour, where the employer has wage setting power that allows it to exercise Pigouvian exploitation<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and pay workers less than their marginal productivity. Robinson used monopsony to describe the wage gap between women and men workers of equal productivity.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1942, Robinson's An Essay on Marxian Economics famously concentrated on Karl Marx as an economist, helping to revive the debate on this aspect of his legacy.

In 1956, Robinson published her magnum opus, The Accumulation of Capital, which extended Keynesianism into the long run.

In 1962, she published Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth, another book on growth theory, which discussed Golden Age growth paths. Afterwards, she developed the Cambridge growth theory with Nicholas Kaldor. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964.<ref name=AAAS>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1964 she made important contributions to the field of economic methodology. She explored the philosophical foundations of economic analysis in her influential book Economic Philosophy, criticizing traditional methodological approaches and arguing in favor of a more diverse and interdisciplinary approach to economics. She promoted a more practical and historically informed approach that considers the social and institutional environment within which economic phenomena occur.

In 1984, Robinson was elected to the American Philosophical Society.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Near 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 economics books for the general public. Robinson suggested developing an alternative to the revival of classical economics.

The Cultural Revolution in China, 1969, is written from the perspective of trying to understand the thinking that lay behind the revolution, particularly Mao Zedong's preoccupations. She visited China for the fifth time in preparation for this book.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In June 2019, the United States Supreme Court used Robinson's monopsony theory in its decision for Apple v. Pepper.<ref name="npr.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the majority opinion, stating Apple can be sued by application developers, "on a monopsony theory."<ref name="npr.org"/>

Achievements

In 1945, she was appointed to the Ministry of Works' Advisory Committee on Building Research, the only economist and the only female member of that committee.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1948, she was appointed the first economist member of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.<ref> Wilks, Stephen. In the Public Interest: Competition Policy and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, p. 93.</ref>

In 1949, she was invited by Ragnar Frisch to become the vice-president of the Econometric Society but declined by saying she that could not be part of the editorial committee of a journal that she could not read.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

During the 1960s, she was a major participant in the Cambridge capital controversy alongside Piero Sraffa.

At least two students who studied under her have won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel; they are Amartya Sen<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Joseph Stiglitz.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In his autobiographical notes for the Nobel Foundation, Stiglitz described their relationship as "tumultuous" and Robinson as unused to "the kind of questioning stance of a brash American student"; after a term, Stiglitz therefore "switched to Frank Hahn".<ref>Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Autobiography" Template:Webarchive, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, December 2002. Retrieved on 8 May 2012.</ref> In his own autobiography notes, Sen described Robinson as "totally brilliant but vigorously intolerant."<ref>Sen, Amartya "Autobiography" Template:Webarchive, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 1998. Retrieved on 8 May 2012.</ref>

She also influenced Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which altered his approach towards economic policies.

Discussion surrounding the Nobel Prize

Robinson never received a Nobel Prize for her contribution to economics. She was widely anticipated to receive the prize for Economics in 1975, and Rachel Reeves described her as 'the most famous economist not to be awarded the Nobel Prize'.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Of all 93 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, only 10 winners have been cited more widely than Robinson.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It is widely assumed that the committee's oversight of Robinson was due to her outspoken support of Mao's economic policies in China, but others have argued this is instead due to sexism within the awarding committee.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Family

Robinson's father was Frederick Maurice, her mother was Margaret Helen Marsh. The London surgeon and Cambridge academic Howard Marsh was Joan Robinson's maternal grandfather.

Joan Maurice married fellow economist Austin Robinson in 1926.<ref name="whoswho1958">Template:Cite book</ref> They had two daughters.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="whoswho1958" />

Recognition

Joan Robinson's blue plaque.

In 2016, the Council of the University of Cambridge approved the use of Robinson's name to mark a physical feature within the North West Cambridge Development.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In April 2024, a blue plaque was erected in Kensington Gardens, London, to honour Robinson's life and work. English Heritage, the awarding organisation, described her as 'one of the first women to achieve academic prominence in the discipline of economics'.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":0" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The economics society of Girton College, Cambridge is named the Joan Robinson Society.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Major works

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), W. Heffer & Sons
  • Introduction to the Theory of Employment (1937)
  • The Cultural Revolution in China, Harmondsworth: Pelican Original (1969)
  • An Introduction to Modern Economics (1973) with John Eatwell
  • The Arms Race (1981), Tanner Lectures on Human Values

See also

References

Template:Reflist

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. (September 1995), pp. 1228–43.
  • Harcourt, G.C. and Kerr, P. (2009). Joan Robinson. Palgrave MacMillan.
  • Template:Cite encyclopedia
  • Howarth, T.E.B. (1978). Cambridge Between Two Wars. London, Collins.
  • Pasinetti, Luigi L. (1987), "Robinson, Joan Violet," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 4, pp. 212–17, Macmillan.
  • Vianello, F. [1996], "Joan Robinson on Normal Prices (and the Normal rate of Profits)", in: Marcuzzo, M.C. and Pasinetti, L. and Roncaglia, A. (eds.), The Economics of Joan Robinson, New York: Routledge, Template:ISBN.

Template:Sister project

Template:Keynesians Template:Economics

Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Joan_Robinson&oldid=443363"