The Provocative Joan Robinson

One of the most original and prolific economists of the twentieth century, Joan Robinson (1903–83) is widely regarded as the most important woman in the history of economic thought. Robinson studied economics at Cambridge University, where she made a career that lasted some fifty years. She was an unlikely candidate for success at Cambridge. A young woman in 1930 in a university dominated by men, she succeeded despite not having a remarkable academic record, a college fellowship, significant publications, or a powerful patron. In The Provocative Joan Robinson, Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes trace the strategies and tactics Robinson used to create her professional identity as a Cambridge economist in the 1930s, examining how she recruited mentors and advocates, carefully defined her objectives, and deftly pursued and exploited opportunities

Rethinking Pigou's Misogyny

Pigou is a misogynist by today's standards for his belief that women are inferior, and for recommending that they not participate in the labor force. This paper argues that Pigou should be judged according to the ethos of the late Victorian era. It provides a less anachronistic assessment by looking at his formative years, his disparate views on upper- and working-class women, and his recognition of the emerging group of professional women. It is documented that although Pigou was a typical Victorian man, he was willing to accept many exceptions to the above "inferiority" rule.Women

The making of the institutional theory of social costs: Discovering the K. W. Kapp and J. M. Clark Correspondence

This article reconstructs the making of the often "overlooked" institutional theory of social costs based on the unexploited correspondence between John Maurice Clark and Karl William Kapp. The reconstruction demonstrates that the institutional argument on social costs was developed as a critique of neoclassical economics and of post-WWII neoliberalism. © 2013 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc

Modern Welfare Economics and Positive Science.

A welfare theory must be policy oriented and have a criterion to evaluate the welfare effects of various policies. Modern welfare economics, however, is highly abstract and devoid of practical applications. It does not, furthermore, have an appropriate welfare criterion. This dissertation contributes to our underst and ing of this paradoxical situation by tracing the origins of modern welfare economics to the social and political problems of the 1920s and 1930s and their reflection in the Pigouvian welfare analysis. The strong egalitarian implications of the Pigouvian economics, unwelcome by many, were rejected as being unscientific (value-laden). Modern welfare economics' obsessive interest in value-free theories results in abstract and unrealistic theories. These theories themselves are not value-free. Rather, they justify the existing order.Ph.D.Business administrationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160257/1/8502756.pd

The Provocative Joan Robinson

One of the most original and prolific economists of the twentieth century, Joan Robinson (1903–83) is widely regarded as the most important woman in the history of economic thought. Robinson studied economics at Cambridge University, where she made a career that lasted some fifty years. She was an unlikely candidate for success at Cambridge. A young woman in 1930 in a university dominated by men, she succeeded despite not having a remarkable academic record, a college fellowship, significant publications, or a powerful patron. In The Provocative Joan Robinson, Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes trace the strategies and tactics Robinson used to create her professional identity as a Cambridge economist in the 1930s, examining how she recruited mentors and advocates, carefully defined her objectives, and deftly pursued and exploited opportunities

Pigou, The Novel

The First Serious Optimist fits smoothly in a genre of intellectual history, fashionable for some time, that treats ideas with a relatively light touch. The stress is rather on the circumstances under which ideas are produced: the respects in which intellectual work is embedded in the vicissitudes of personal lives and careers, political and economic conditions, and the conflicts they exhibit. The point is to document how the world of thought intersects with the world of action and passion. A..

On Pigou’s Theory of Economic Policy Analysis

The economics of A.C. Pigou is generally regarded as an ensemble of policies—chiefly ‘Pigouvian’ taxes and subsidies—designed to maximize economic welfare. We contest this view, arguing that Pigou was not a proponent of specific policies but rather a logician of policy analysis. Although he assessed welfare programs of his time, his judgments on policies were invariably prima facie, hedged and qualified by a formidable array of restrictive and contingent variables. Thus there are no definitively Pigouvian welfare measures. In Part I of the essay, we show that Pigou developed a blueprint for an analytical theory of economic welfare that specified the conditions an analysis of economic policy must satisfy in order to qualify as scientifically legitimate. In Part II, we examine his writings on public finance in order to explore the main inference he drew from this theory: the historicity of policy analysis, a critical aspect of his thought that has been largely neglected in the secondary literature