The Transition from Keynesian to Monetarist Economics in Australia: Joan Robinson’s 1975 Visit to Australia1

When Joan Robinson visited Monash University in 1975 she was at the height of her fame. She had just brought out a new alternative economics textbook and was strongly tipped, in the International Women’s Year, to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The Cambridge School of Economics, which she represented, was in late bloom but it was the neoclassical school that was proving resurgent and already exhibiting a strong presence at Monash. It would make for theatrics when she arrived there. Although the visit to Australia overall was only for a few months, she gave lectures to first-year students at several universities and made several public presentations. The timing of her visit was poignant, with Australia, like Britain, caught in the throes of stagflation. There was an ongoing reappraisal of macroeconomic policy. Robinson’s visit occurred while Milton Friedman, too, was visiting Australia on a stockbroker-funded lecture tour to push the monetarist explanation of inflation. Drawing on her correspondence with Richard Kahn and some of the lectures and the reaction they provoked, this paper recalls Robinson’s visit and assesses the impact, if any, it had upon Australian economics.