Leading Cambridge Keynesian, the most important woman economist of the 20th century
An English economist, acknowledged as the most outstanding woman economist of the twentieth century, often held to be the one top candidate denied the Nobel Prize for her sex. A core member of the "Cambridge Circus" around Keynes, she helped expound and develop his theory. She put forward the theory of "imperfect competition," noting that real markets are mostly neither perfectly competitive nor pure monopoly but somewhere between. In the famous "Cambridge capital controversy" she launched a sharp challenge on mainstream neoclassical economics. Fiercely independent and radical all her life, she was one of the most forceful internal critics of mainstream economics.
Joan Robinson’s scholarly achievement was the equal of any Nobel laureate, and many hold that she was denied the prize largely because she was a woman, and too radical, too often at odds with the mainstream. All her life she challenged economic orthodoxy, even questioning its mathematical foundations. Her case reminds us that how the "mainstream" of economics is formed — who is written into the textbooks and who left out — is itself a history of power.
Whether Joan Robinson was denied the Nobel for her sex and radical stance is much discussed by scholars and the public; this site states the claim.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.