Cheers to Joan Robinson!


Joan Robinson was arguably the first female economist to be thought of as a major player in economics. She lived from 1903-1983 and was a British native. She lived in Europe her whole life and married an economist, Austin Robinson. They both worked out of the same educational institution, University of Cambridge. Joan worked there from 1931-1971 and published tons of work on economics ranging from her break out work, The Economics of Imperfect Competition, to expanding upon Keynesian economics. She had an original type of writing that was known for being methodical and included mathematical equations expressed in words. Due to the large amount of work Robinson published, she was known for having a significant impact on the field of economics. One of Robinson's famous quotes was, "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". I thought this was an interesting way to think of economics. 

Joan Robinson was a power house in economics and her work still stands today as an influence in the community. That being said, she did have set backs in her career. It was believed by her fellow economist that her gender slowed her growing career. For instance, it took her longer than male professors to be recognized as a full instructor. For most of her time at the University of Cambridge she was an assistant instructor even though she had the qualities of a full instructor. 

Another point of speculation was her lack of recognition when it came to the nobel prize. Her community believed she should have been granted the award in 1975. Robinson lost the award to a male competitor and never received the recognition she deserved for her contributions. It is unsure if she lost due to her gender or her views. Some critics argue that it had nothing to due with the time period and her gender, but had everything to do with her growth acceptance of left wing politics.  Although the reason why Robinson did not win the nobel prize is unknown, one point is true, her colleagues believed her life work earned her the award and recognition in economics. 


References: 
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Robinson 
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Robinson.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Robinson
http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/robinson.htm
http://www.azquotes.com/author/32076-Joan_Robinson

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 13, 2017 at 10:16 AM

    Joan Robinson is another one of those economists who contributed fundamentally to both microeconomics and macroeconomics. I encountered her work first as as grad student in considering oligopoly theory. Unfortunately, that work is not so closely related to our course content, so we won't consider in our class.

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