Joan Robinson

"Joan Robinson and Unions, Distribution and Inflation"

Joan Robinson on “ History versus Equilibrium ”

Joan Robinson’s endeavor to expose a lacuna between “history” and “equilibrium” constitutes a significant plank in her overall critique of orthodox economic theory. It also goes beyond the hornet’s nest she successfully exposed in her celebrated critique of the treatment of “capital” in neoclassical theory. I argue in this paper that, instead of a closed circle of equilibrium relations, univers...

Joan Robinson and the Three Cambridge Revolutions

Joan Robinson’s association with three Cambridge ‘revolutions’—imperfect competition, effective demand and capital theory—is examined in the context of her personal and intellectual partnership with Richard Kahn, John Maynard Keynes and Piero Sraffa. Initially, imperfect competition appeared to have successfully extended marginal analysis to all market forms. It also allowed Richard Kahn and Jo...

Even dying must be edited: further thoughts on Joan Robinson.

"Joan Robinson: One Woman's Story' is a cinéma vérité style record of a woman's losing struggle against ovarian cancer. The film has been shown now twice on the American Public Television Network. It has received good notices primarily from the lay press. Yet the film depicts much that is out-of-date and much that is debatable. In general, we feel that it presents a depressing picture of the ca...

Joan Lane

The death of Dr Joan Lane after a short illness in May of this year is a great and sad loss to her colleagues and friends and to the history of medicine community. Joan was about to take retirement from the University of Warwick, where she had taught for the past twenty-two years. Although she had no intention of ceasing with her research activities, she was planning to spend more time with her...