Joan Violet Robinson was a British economist and was a prominent disciple of John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge University. She was a professor in economics at Cambridge University from 1928 to 1971. During the 1930's, Robinson was a member of what wa s known as "The Cambridge Circus", which consisted of a group of economists who met regularly to discuss Keynes book, "The General Theory". Other members of this group were Roy Harrod, Austin Robinson, James Meade, Richard Kahn, and Piero Sraffa. Robins on is probably best known for the "Cambridge Controversy", which was about the limitations of Samuelson's and Solow's aggregation of capital and using this measure as an input in the production function. According to Robinson, the real issue of this deba te was not so much the problem of how to measure capital but rather the question of "whether saving determines investment instead of investment determining saving." She became more and more radical in her political ideology (which was left on the politic al spectrum) as she aged, and this probably hurt her chance at being awarded the Nobel Prize.
Works by Joan Violet Robinson:
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