The IDS Annual Lecture was delivered by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, speaking on ‘Rethinking growth: making economies work for the common good’.
In a time of rising global inequality, climate and water crises, and health pandemics, how can governments achieve growth that is more inclusive and sustainable? How can a renewed focus on mission-oriented policies and common good economics help us understand how the public and private sectors can collaborate to achieve this goal? How can we get out of the trap of fixing market failures, and start to proactively shape and co-create an economy that works for people and planet?
Our health and climate challenges are not only global but also inter-connected. Tackling them requires investment, innovation and collaboration that engages the public sector, private sector and civil society. At the national level this requires policies that cut across sectors and across government departments. At the global level it requires global governance structures that put equity and justice at the centre. Indeed, one big lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic was that unless economic activity – such as the development of vaccines – is governed for the common good, many people remain excluded from its benefits.
My talk will build on my recent work which attempts to build a new perspective on the common good where the how is as important as the what. The “economics of the common good” offers a useful framework for setting common goals and common agendas, knowledge sharing, and collective distribution of rewards.
References
Mazzucato, M. (2021). Mission Economy: a moonshot guide to changing capitalism, Penguin, Allen Lane, London, UK.
Mazzucato, M. (2023). ‘Governing the economics of the common good: from correcting market failures to shaping collective goals’. Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 27.1: 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2023.2280969
Mazzucato, M. and Ghebreyesus T. (2024). ‘Advancing the economics of health for all’, The Lancet, 404 (10457): 998-1000.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01873-7
About the speaker
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy’s highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing ‘more humanity’ to the world.
As well as The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013), she is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and most recently The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). She advises policymakers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her roles have included for example Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a member of the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, and the Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change.
Chair
The IDS Annual Lecture will be chaired by Professor Peter Taylor, Acting Director, Institute of Development Studies.
With Carlota Perez, Honorary Professor, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex Business School.
