ROBINSON, JOAN (VIOLET)

ne Maurice born Oct. 31, 1903, Camberley, Surrey, Eng. died Aug. 5, 1983, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng. British economist and academic who was involved in the development and furtherance of Keynesian economic theory. Robinson was educated at the University of Cambridge, receiving her degree in economics in 1925. In 1926 she married Austin Robinson, another Cambridge economist. She was on the staff of Cambridge from 1931 to 1971, becoming a full professor in 1965. In 1979 she became the first woman to be made an honorary fellow of King's College. Robinson established her reputation in 1933 with the publication of The Economics of Imperfect Competition (2nd ed., 1969), in which she analyzed distribution and allocation, dealing particularly with the concept of exploitation. During the 1930s Robinson was involved with the Cambridge debates that were instrumental in the development of Keynes's revolutionary economic theory. In addition to teaching Keynesian theory, she wrote several books, study guides, and pamphlets designed to introduce economic theory to the nonspecialist. In the early 1940s, however, she began to push the Keynesian model beyond its theoretical framework, introducing aspects of Marxist economics in books such as An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942; 2nd ed., 1966) and Marx, Marshall, and Keynes (1955). Her unorthodox views and sympathetic approach to noncapitalist systems involved her in considerable controversy throughout her career. Robinson made several trips abroad, especially 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). Among the best known of her many books are The Accumulation of Capital (1956; 3rd ed. 1969), Economic Philosophy (1963), and Introduction to Modern Economics (1973). The five volumes of her Collected Economic Papers (195179) were reprinted in 1980.