(Edward) Austin (Gossage) Robinson (1897-1993)

G.C. Harcourt

Introduction

Austin Robinson was born on 20 November 1897, at Farnham in Surrey, the eldest son of Albert Robinson, ‘an impecunious clergyman’, and Edith Robinson (nee Sidebotham), the daughter of a clergyman. It was a happy marriage; they had four children who had a happy childhood. Their upbringing fostered self-reliance, fun, and games as well providing an introduction to a sense of duty and the practical application of Christian principles.

Through scholarships, Austin went to Marlborough where he read Classics and then obtained a scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge (his father’s college) in 1916. Before taking up his scholarship, he served in the Royal Naval Air Service, training as a pilot of sea planes which he loved. He went up to Cambridge in 1919. The First World War with its appalling loss of life and gross injustices had a traumatic effect on Austin’s generation at Cambridge, though he was never a pacifist ‘in the technical sense’ (Austin Robinson 1992: 204).

In writing this chapter, I have drawn on my Memoir of Austin Robinson for the British Academy, published in Proceedings of the British Academy (Harcourt 1997); my Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture, ‘Two Views on Development: Austin and Joan Robinson’, published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics (1998: 367—377) and my entry on Austin in D.A. Clark (ed.) The Elgar Companion to Development Studies, Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, USA: Edward Elgar (2006: 60—67).

G.C. Harcourt (H)

Professor Emeritus Economics, School of Business,

University of New South Wales, Australia e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

R.A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_26

Austin obtained a First in Classics after 15 months and then went with relief to read economics. (Hearing Maynard Keynes’s lecture on what became The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Keynes 1919 [1971]) had a major influence on his decision.) C.R. Fay’s supervision produced ferocious debates, forcing Austin to make explicit and coherent arguments. When Fay went to Canada, Austin was supervised by Dennis Robertson and Gerald Shove. Though he was well instructed by two powerful minds, supervisions never again had the same magic.

Austin graduated with another First in 1922. He began research at Corpus Christi, which was then renowned for its unique brand of High Church and High Toryism. Arguments with intelligent colleagues with very different views on economic and social matters were of inestimable value to Austin, especially after he became a Fellow in 1923 and had to teach as well as to argue and understand. By 1925, he had moved from lecturing on Money, Credit, and Prices, with which he was never happy, to what was and remained his favourite subject, Industry (Cairncross 1993: 17-18).

He married Joan Maurice, who had been his pupil, in 1926. Soon after, they went to India for nearly two years where Austin tutored the young Maharajah of Gwalior. The experience kindled his (and Joan’s) lifelong love of India and its people and introduced them to the problems of development in a most practical way. Austin contributed a first-class piece of applied political economy to The British Crown and the Indian States (1928). Drawing on inadequate statistics, he showed judgement and imagination in estimating fiscal flows to and from the Princely States to British India.

The Robinsons returned to Cambridge in 1928. Austin started afresh his long academic career there, only seriously interrupted by distinguished service in Whitehall during the Second World War. He became a University Lecturer in 1929 and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex in 1931. Austin was appointed to a Chair in 1950, retiring in 1965, only to continue an extremely varied and intensive career until his death in 1993.

Keynes had known Austin when he was an undergraduate—oral tradition has it that Keynes regarded him as ‘his brightest student’. He asked him in 1934 to be Assistant Editor of the Economic Journal. This was the start of 60 years of service in all to the Royal Economic Society (RES)—Editor of the journal for 36 years, Secretary of the Society for 25 years. He was a member of the editorial board that supervised for the Society the publication of the 30 volumes of the Collected Writings of Keynes; indeed, he was judged to be ‘the moving force getting Keynes’s writings collected and edited’ (Hahn, 6 June 1994, quoted in Harcourt 2001: 150).

Increasingly in the post-war period, Austin was drawn towards the problems of developing countries. He was also an indefatigable founder of and worker for the International Economic Association (IEA), of which he was Treasurer (1950-1959), President (1959-1962), and General Editor of its volumes (1950-1980). Austin edited or co-edited 12 volumes of its conferences. The bulk of these were concerned with development issues, and to all of them Austin made lucid, carefully considered contributions. Ken Arrow and Tony Atkinson (July 1994, personal correspondence) noted that Austin thought small conferences generated the most valuable discussions but in order to guard again exclusiveness, he urged the need for regional conferences. As General Editor, he wielded his pencil forcefully’—the pay-off was the academic quality of the conference volumes.

In the following sections, I discuss Austin’s two classic volumes in the early industrial organisation literature; his early work in the 1930s on development through Christian institutions; his wise words on The General Theory; his wartime experiences; his roles in the IEA and his contributions to the economics of developing economies in the post-war world; and his roles in the Cambridge Faculty of Economics and Politics and in Sidney Sussex. The concluding section sums up the contributions of Austin whom Alec Cairncross, his biographer, dubbed ‘an Economic Advisor’ and whose admiring Cambridge colleagues regarded him as the role model par excellence for aspiring applied political economists.