Economist and Friend: George Rosen (1920–2018)

("Industrial Finance," Economic Weekly, 1 December 1962) The issues flagged by Rosen's book all those years ago bedevil us to this very day, given the poorly developed corporate bond market. The specialist institutions he supported for long-term finance have seen a limited rebirth of sorts, with the post-reform setting up of the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) in 1997, and the India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited (IIFCL) in 2006, this time with a wider funding base, extending beyond the state, and better incentives for due diligence. On the last mentioned, when Rosen first engaged professionally with India in the 1950s as a member of a team from the Centre for International Studies at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was a steady stream of Western economists visiting India to provide advice on how to achieve what in those days was quaintly termed "take-off into sustained growth."