Documents Mazzucato, Mariana 37 results

"This article contextualizes the reemergence of mission-oriented innovation policies in the broader search for a new type of innovation policies—and the appropriate organizational forms—that can tackle “grand societal challenges,” and focuses on our knowledge gaps in designing and implementing such innovation policies. We identify the concept and practice of dynamic capabilities in the public sector as perhaps the key missing element in the search for the new generation of innovation policies. We offer a brief conceptual and historical overview of what constitutes mission-oriented policies, focusing on two key elements of missions: coordinated public investments and market-shaping policies to “crowd in” private and third sector experimentation and innovation. The article concludes by briefly discussing the central public sector dynamic capabilities for 21st-century missions."

"Enhancing research and development, and ensuring equitable pricing and access to cutting-edge treatments, are both vital to a biopharmaceutical innovation system that works in the public interest. However, despite delivering numerous therapeutic advances, the existing system suffers from major problems: a lack of directionality to meet key needs; inefficient collaboration; high prices that fail to reflect the public contribution; and an overly financialised business model. COVID-19 has magnified and focalized these challenges. We review these problems and argue that overcoming them requires a fundamental reframing of the role of the state in innovation, from market-fixing to market co-creation and co-shaping, in which risks and rewards are shared across a symbiotic public-private relationship."

"Attempts by governments to curb the market power of ‘Big Tech' (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft) are impeded by limited public information on their diversified digital platform ecosystems. Big Tech's annual 10-K financial reports disclose little about their globally dominant ‘free' services, platform user numbers, and monetization practices, and suites of products. To support antitrust and regulatory oversight, we propose mandatory 10-K type disclosures covering Big Tech's: (i) internally used operating metrics (e.g. monthly active users), which underpin platform market share and monetization; (ii) ubiquitous ‘free' products which escape traditional ‘profit and loss' reporting; (iii) ‘monetization' processes detailing how platforms make money from user data and attention; and (iv) product-by-product reporting through updating segment reporting rules. Disclosures should be mandatory for digital ‘gatekeepers' and eventually integrated into reporting standards for all digital platforms."

"Economic theory justifies policy when there are concrete market failures. The article shows how in the case of innovation, successful policies that have led to radical innovations have been more about market shaping and creating through direct and pervasive public financing, rather than market fixing. The paper reviews and discusses evidence for this in three key areas: (i) the presence of finance from public sources across the entire innovation chain; (ii) the concept of ‘mission-oriented' policies that have created new technological and industrial landscapes; and (iii) the entrepreneurial and lead investor role of public actors, willing and able to take on extreme risks, independent of the business cycle. We further illustrate these three characteristics for the case of clean technology, and discuss how a market-creating and -shaping perspective may be useful for understanding the financing of transformative innovation needed for confronting contemporary societal challenges."

"Western capitalism is in crisis. For decades investment has been falling, living standards have stagnated or declined, and inequality has risen dramatically. Economic policy has neither reformed the financial system nor restored stable growth. Climate change meanwhile poses increasing risks to future prosperity. In this book some of the world s leading economists propose new ways of thinking about capitalism. In clear and compelling prose, each chapter shows how today s deep economic problems reflect the inadequacies of orthodox economic theory and the failure of policies informed by it. The chapters examine a range of contemporary economic issues, including fiscal and monetary policy, financial markets and business behaviour, inequality and privatisation, and innovation and environmental change. The authors set out alternative economic approaches which better explain how capitalism works, why it often doesn t, and how it can be made more innovative, inclusive and sustainable. Outlining a series of far-reaching policy reforms, Rethinking Capitalism offers a powerful challenge to mainstream economic debate, and new ideas to transform it."