Pervez Tahir – författare

Joan Robinson was a member of the famous Keynes Circus of young economists at Cambridge in the 1930''s. She was a theorist par excellence, making outstanding contributions to the understanding of competition, aggregate demand and capital. At the same time, she developed an interest in underdeveloped economies and alternatives to capitalism that eventually produced a long list of writings on China between the 1950''s to the 1970''s. These writings were neither theoretical nor empirical, but a series of opinion pieces and reports. Yet it is these writings that arguably cost Joan Robinson the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. 

This short book reviews those writings and comments on what has happened since with regard to China’s development, Joan Robinson''s interpretation and predictions, and how her 1950''s lectures in China match up to China’s policies since Mao.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in how the history of economic thoughtcan inform and progress development economics.

This book explores the early work and activities of Joan Robinson that focused on economic development within underdeveloped countries, in particular India before independence. By analysing the style of Robinson’s thinking and economic analysis, and based on the works of Indian contemporaries, parts of The British Crown and the Indian States previously unattributed to her are seen to exhibit her preoccupation with poverty, backwardness, unemployment, the population problem, international trade, and the role of the state. Through keeping in mind Robinson’s later work, the development of her ideas can be reflected upon, alongside critical perspectives. It also reveals the beginnings of her role as a public intellectual.