Joan Robinson's Critique of Equilibrium: An Appraisal

Abstract

Joan Robinson devoted much of her en- ergy to critiquing equilibrium analysis, or what she was accustomed to calling Walras- ian economics. In her various writings she returned again and again to the idea that Walrasian economics necessarily misdirected analysis in macroeconomics, capital theory, distribution theory, and value theory. Many of her writings made mention of Walrasian equilibrium, usually in the context of the wrong way to look at a particular problem. Indeed, for Robinson, the Walrasian theory came to stand for the intellectual opposition as it were, for the "others" who had got it wrong, where the "it" was anything from the measurement of capital to the role of expec- tations in long run investment decisions...