Joan Robinson - Contributions to modern economics (1978)

18 Sourced Quotes

View all Joan Robinson Quotes
At any moment there is certainly not balanced trade between the various areas of the habitable globe that happens to be under seperate national governments — there is an ever-changing pattern of deficits and surpluses.

Joan Robinson
To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ' burden upon industry '. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ' we have never had it so good ' we find that we ' cannot afford ' just what we most need.

Joan Robinson
But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.

Joan Robinson
There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.

Joan Robinson
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

Joan Robinson
It seems that neither the Keynesian nor the Marxian prognosis of the future of capitalism is being fulfilled and we are left without any particular theory as to what will happen next.

Joan Robinson
'Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.

Joan Robinson
The bastard Keynesian doctrine, evolved in the United States, invaded the economic faculties of the world, floating on the wings of the almighty dollar.

Joan Robinson
But the tygers of wrath go the other way. Do not ask me why. It is just a fact I noticed when I was looking through field glasses from a machan.

Joan Robinson
It is impossible to add the stock of money to the flow of saving.

Joan Robinson
The merchant had observed that the marginal utility of daughters decreases with surprising rapidity.

Joan Robinson
It is much easier to organize control over one industry serving many markets than over one market served by the products of several industries.

Joan Robinson
Income from property is not the reward of waiting, it is the reward of employing a good stockbroker.

Joan Robinson
It is high time to abandon the mainstream and take to the turbulent waters of truly dynamic analysis.

Joan Robinson
Why did the hunters in the Wealth of Nations exchange beavers for deer?

Joan Robinson
When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.

Joan Robinson
It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.

Joan Robinson
Michal Kalecki's claim to priority of publication is indisputable.

Joan Robinson