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Acknowledgements Abbreviations1. Pigou in the Foreground2. 'The Most Brilliant Young Man I Know'3. Developing a Framework4. The Theory of Policy Analysis5. The Cost Controversies6. The Robbins Critique7. Confrontations with Keynes8. LegacyNotesReferencesIndex

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

In the acrimonious British controversy over free trade in 1903–6, tariff reformers advocated protective and preferential tariffs to increase the revenue of the exchequer and unify the British Empire. Their arguments—generally informal and labile—were based on several premises: British welfare—not to be confused with material wealth—depended on economic productivity, the prosperity of the working class, and an economic policy that maintained a stable demand for labor, ensuring predictable sources of employment and income. A. C. Pigou, who entered the controversy as a zealous free trader, fashioned the piecemeal ideas of tariff reformers into an analytical framework, translating their polemical arguments into a theoretical discourse. In 1906, he applied this framework to the consequences of tariff reform for the British economy. In 1907, he used it to explore the economic impact of the Poor Laws. And in Wealth and Welfare (1912), he generalized the framework, constructing a systematic analysis of market failures and the conditions under which they might be repaired.

In February 1933, Edward Chamberlin published The Theory of Monopolistic Competition. Joan Robinson's The Economics of Imperfect Competition followed in the spring. A disciplinary consensus quickly formed, holding that the two books represented simultaneous discoveries of the same theoretical ideas and covered the same ground. Chamberlin was adamant in insisting on fundamental differences between their positions. Convinced of the superior explanatory power of his work, he devoted much of his post–Monopolistic Competition career laboring to reverse the disciplinary consensus. We analyze the main tactics he employed in attempting to gain control of the reception of his theory and consider why they failed.