Shortly before engaging in these public disputes with Keynes, Robbins had arranged for Hayek to present a series of lectures at the LSE in January 1931.44 The fortuitous timing led some to conclude that Robbins was drawing on Austria for intellectual reinforcements. "While the controversy about public works was developing," the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson recalled, "Professor Robbins sent to Vienna for a member of the Austrian school to provide a counterattraction to Keynes."

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 65