Paul Narcyz Rosenstein-Rodan (1902–1985) was an economist of Jewish origin born in Kraków, who was trained in the Austrian tradition under Hans Mayer [fr] in Vienna.
His early contributions to economics were in pure economic theory – on marginal utility, complementarity, hierarchical structures of wants and the pervasive Austrian School issue of time.
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, viz economies of scale and scope, to escape the low level equilibrium "trap".
The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Paul Rosenstein-Rodan in 1962.
His imagined scenario of 20,000 shoe factory workers seems to have been developed by popular fiction writer Douglas Adams into 'the most totally evil place in the Galaxy' Frogstar World B.