Economists
Joan Robinson
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Joan Robinson was a British economist who spent her career at Cambridge University and became one of the most influential economists never to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. She began as a follower of Alfred Marshall, developed an early and important theory of imperfect competition in the 1930s, and became one of the earliest and most committed Keynesians after John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory in 1936. In her later career she led a post-Keynesian and neo-Ricardian critique of mainstream growth and capital theory, playing a central role in the Cambridge capital controversy of the 1960s.
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Amartya Sen, Economists Robinson supervised Amartya Sen's research at Cambridge. Sen later described her as totally brilliant but vigorously intolerant of dissenting views.
Associated With School
Robinson was a central figure of the postwar Cambridge, England side of the capital controversy.
Robinson worked alongside Keynes at Cambridge in the 1930s and became one of the earliest and most committed Keynesians after 1936, before her later work moved into a post-Keynesian and neo-Ricardian critique of mainstream economics that set her apart from the Keynesian mainstream.
Robinson's Cambridge circle is credited as post-Keynesian economics' organizing milieu, alongside her earlier, separately recorded association with Keynesian economics itself.
Influenced By
Additional Source WikipediaInfobox, Joan Robinson (Influences) Sources
1. Wikipedia
1. Wikipedia
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With School: Keynesian EconomicsView the Source 1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With School: Cambridge School, Cambridge capital controversy, The two CambridgesQuote, Associated With School: Cambridge School, Cambridge capital controversy, The two Cambridges
Key figures: Joan Robinson, Piero Sraffa, Nicholas Kaldor, Luigi Pasinetti, Richard Kahn
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced By: John Maynard Keynes, Infobox, Joan Robinson (Influences)Quote, Influenced By: John Maynard Keynes, Infobox, Joan Robinson (Influences)
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Piero Sraffa, Michał Kalecki
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
Palgrave MacmillanRobinson, Joan
Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
Hyman Minsky, Yale University Press, 1986Associated With School: Post-Keynesian Economics
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Samuelson and Solow, defending the neoclassical growth and capital theory Robinson and her Cambridge colleagues challenged, initially treated aggregate capital as a single measurable quantity whose marginal product determines the rate of profit. Robinson, joined by Piero Sraffa, showed this collapses once reswitching is admitted: a given technique can be the most profitable choice at both a low and a high interest rate, with a different technique preferred in between, so capital cannot be aggregated into one quantity independent of the prices reswitching itself is meant to explain. Samuelson conceded the technical point in a 1966 summing up, acknowledging reswitching is logically possible, though he and Solow argued the practical implications for applied growth economics were more limited than the Cambridge, England side maintained.
A dissenting reading, from Paul Samuelson and Robert SolowThe New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Palgrave Macmillan
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