If we want growth today to be more innovation-driven, more inclusive and more sustainable, then we need a more active state, not a less active one. Yet we still hear the dogma that we should just fix market failure by focusing on science and infrastructure, and to "level the playing field."
Mariana MazzucatoAs a businessman, Donald Trump has been associated with some of the worst excesses of a particular style of value-extracting and asset stripping capitalism: set up businesses, let them fail, avoid paying suppliers, use bankruptcy laws to avoid taxes for decades, then set up another business somewhere else. It is this model that is the cause of many problems we see today.
Mariana MazzucatoIt's important that public funds be spent in research directions that are pushing market frontiers rather than working in existing areas. This means funding research not only on drugs but also on areas like life-style changes, even if the profit potential is lower for Big Pharma as you cannot sell that change as you can sell a medicine.
Mariana MazzucatoReal median household incomes in the U.S. were basically the same in 1989 as in 2014. But we are also seeing similar challenges in the U.K. in the stagnation of real wages.
Mariana MazzucatoBrexit and Trump's election are forcing countries to come up with new radical ideas.
Mariana Mazzucato