gridlines_joan

In 1933, Joan Robinson popularised a word.

That word was monopsony. It’s when you have only a single person or business that can buy something. This theory was outlined in Joan Robinson’s 1933 book, The Economics of Imperfect Competition.

Joan was 29 years old. She had just released a book of original insights into market competition. This was her first major achievement in what would come to be a remarkable career in economics.

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Two key texts on Joan Robinson’s life are Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes’ The Provocative Joan Robinson, and Marjorie Shepherd Turner’s Joan Robinson and the Americans.

You can download an mp3 of this podcast episode here.

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References

Anon. 2018. “Marshall, Alfred.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

Aslanbeigui, Nahid, and Guy Oakes. 2009. The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Blaug, Mark. 1992. Joan Robinson (1903-1983) and George Shackle (1903-1992). Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

Cairncross, Alexander. 1993. Austin Robinson: The Life of an Economic Advisor. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Harcourt, Geoffrey, and Prue Kerr. 2009. Joan Robinson. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Groenewegen, Peter. “Joan Robinson: 1903 – 1981.” Australian Left Review 86. Accessed from [http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1139&context=alr].

Keynes, John Maynard. 1930. A Treatise on Money. London: Macmillan.

— 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan.

Marcuzzo, Maria Cristina, and Annalisa Rosselli. 2008. “The history of economic thought through gender lenses.” In Frontiers in the Economics of Gender. Eds. Francesca Bettio, Alina Verashchagina. London: Routledge.

Robinson, Joan. 1932. Economics is a Serious Subject: The Apologia of an Economist to the Mathematician, the Scientist and the Plain Man. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons.

Robinson, Joan. 1933. The Economics of Imperfect Competition. London: Macmillan.

Rima, Ingrid H. (ed.) 1991. The Joan Robinson Legacy. New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.

Shepherd Turner, Marjorie. 1989. Joan Robinson and the Americans. Abingdon: Routledge.

Tullberg, Rita McWilliams. 1998. Women at Cambridge, Revised Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Music

This episode uses Divertissement, Flighty Theme, Enchanted Valley and Enchanted Journey by Kevin MacLeod. They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.