Paul Rosenstein-Rodan | |
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| Born | 1902 |
| Died | April 28, 1985 |
| Academic background | |
| Influences | Ragnar Nurkse |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Development economist |
| School or tradition | Austrian School |
Paul Narcyz Rosenstein-Rodan (1902–1985) was an economist of Jewish origin born inKraków, who was trained in theAustrian tradition underHans Mayer [fr] inVienna. His early contributions toeconomics were in pure economic theory – onmarginal utility, complementarity, hierarchical structures of wants and the pervasive Austrian School issue of time.
Rosenstein-Rodan emigrated toBritain in 1930, and taught atUniversity College London and then atLondon School of Economics until 1947. He then moved to theWorld Bank, before moving on toMIT, where he was a professor from 1953 to 1968.
He is the author of the 1943 article "Problems of Industrialisation of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe" – origin of the "Big Push Model" theory – in which he argued for planned large-scale investment programmes in industrialisation in countries with a large surplus workforce in agriculture, in order to take advantage of network effects, vizeconomies of scale and scope, to escape the low level equilibrium "trap". He thus developed a theme laid out byAllyn Young in his 1928 article "Increasing Returns and Economic Progress", in which the latter himself expanded a theme formulated by Adam Smith in 1776.
TheInternational Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Paul Rosenstein-Rodan in 1962.
His sister was the Polish painter and poetErna Rosenstein.
His imagined scenario of 20,000 shoe factory workers seems to have been developed by popular fiction writerDouglas Adams into 'the most totally evil place in the Galaxy' Frogstar World B.[1]
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