The Cambridge Background to Imperfect Competition

Abstract

The Economics of Imperfect Competition (Robinson, 1933) is a quintessentially Cambridge book, very much an outgrowth of the economics of Marshall and Pigou as tempered and criticized in the ‘Cambridge cost controversies’ of the 1920s. So close is the book’s dependence on Cambridge tradition, and so limited its reliance on intellectual developments emanating elsewhere, that it is difficult to imagine that it could have been written by anyone but a true product of the Cambridge School of Economics, founded by Marshall and, in the early 1930s, very much at the height of its glory.

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the History of Economics Society, George Mason University, May 1985. I am grateful to R. D. Collison Black, Sam Hollander, Brian Loasby and Frederic Lee for comments and advice. I retain vivid memories of Joan Robinson as a striking and formidable figure on the Cambridge scene of the 1950s, but unfortunately our contacts were slight so that I can add little of interest on a personal level.