KEY POINTS:
* Wolfgang Rosenberg, economist. Died aged 92.
For many years Wolfgang Rosenberg, a Canterbury University economist who attained some national prominence, trod a rather lonely road amidst the confusion and often dismay created by the introduction of Rogernomics.
While Roger Douglas, as the Labour finance minister, set
out on a path of dismantling state bureaucracy and introducing a free market economy, Rosenberg clung to his leftist convictions.
A booklet he wrote in 1972 entitled Import Controls and Full Employment ... Or Else probably summed up his approach best.
In 1986 he produced a paper called The Magic Square, provocatively subtitled: What every New Zealander should know about Rogernomics and the alternatives.
The idea of this square was a German way of presenting the four main goals of economic policy. The sides of the square represented full employment, growth, price stability and the balance of payments.
It was a conventional statement of the time.
Rosenberg defined Rogernomics as the faith that all four of these objectives could be achieved by leaving everything to the free market, subject only to tight control of the money supply. Rosenberg maintained that this was impossible.
As Rogernomics removed the protective barrier of import licensing, introduced by the first Labour government in 1938, jobs were lost in declining industries.
But the use of such barriers, Wolfgang Rosenberg believed, had previously allowed unemployment to be kept below 0.5 per cent. There was also minimal inflation and growth as import controls were used to maintain a reasonable balance of payments.
Rosenberg believed in the 1980s that there was no reason the same policy should not be applied again .
To people like the present Minister of Agriculture and Progressive Party leader, Jim Anderton, Rosenberg remained one of the country's unsung heroes.
He was "not afraid to go against the orthodox or the powerful" and crossed swords with the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon.
"During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, when many of his colleagues were enthusiastic for, or muted their criticism of, the prevailing belief in the market as the cure-all of New Zealand's problems, he was not afraid to speak and publish against the prevailing current," Mr Anderton said this week.
"Woofy", as Rosenberg was known to family and friends, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1915, and grew towards adulthood when being a socialist and a Jew were increasingly dangerous credentials in that country.
He was eventually forced to leave his homeland and reached New Zealand in 1937.
He married Ann Eichelbaum in 1945 and they had two sons and a daughter while he built himself up a creditable list of achievements.
He worked in commercial accountancy 1937 to 1943 and at the Department of Economics at Canterbury University from 1945 until 1980.
From that last year he also practised as a lawyer and barrister for disadvantaged people until his second forced retirement in 1999 due to health problems.
Wolfgang Rosenberg was active all his life in liberal and left-wing causes.
