@mazzucatom.bsky.social
Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London. Author: Entrepreneurial State, Value of Everything, Mission Economy, Big Con. Founding Director UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose www.marianamazzucato.com
💪 On #InternationalWomensDay, we celebrated the women economists shaping more inclusive and sustainable economies.
SEA is proud to bring together women economists and policymakers to connect new economic thinking with real-world change.
🔗 Learn more about SEA's mission here: buff.ly/XXjI7kC
We need to reimagine the Economics of Arts and Culture and the metrics we use to understand and govern them ➡️ www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/e...
Standard economic frameworks treat culture as peripheral—something to fund when budgets allow, cut when times are tight.
Brazil and London's Notting Hill Carnivals, demonstrate why this is wrong. Culture creates dynamic public value that conventional metrics systematically miss.
As consumers struggled to pay their bills during the energy crisis of 2022, fossil fuel companies earned $916 billion in profits. Tonight, I will be a discussant at LSEEI for a timely talk by Gregor Semieniuk on who's winning as energy prices soar, and who stands to lose from a low-carbon transition
The answer: mission-oriented industrial strategy led by a capable state that puts labour at the centre by building in clear conditionalities in the contracts for public investment that ensure risks and rewards are shared equally from the start.
More on this approach below.
Workers take risks. Taxpayers fund breakthroughs. Yet the rewards flow elsewhere.
Spoke today at ILO Innovation Day about what it would take to change that.
See you this evening!
Can governments sense change? Coordinate across systems? Experiment and learn? Reconfigure strategies when needed? Public value emerges when structural capacity, organisational routines and dynamic capabilities reinforce one another.
Read the paper ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...
New working paper with @rainerkattel.bsky.social: The critical question isn't the size of the state—it's the capabilities of the state.
Market-Shaping States reframes the state as a co-creator of public value, not just a market corrector. This requires capabilities to set direction, coordinate across silos, experiment under uncertainty and learn from what works.
Read more ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...
New working paper with @rainerkattel.bsky.social: governments are stuck using frameworks designed to fix market failures. But climate, inequality and technological transformation require shaping collective futures—not patching up existing ones.
Pre-order here ➡️ www.penguin.co.uk/books/464576...
In 2024, PM Mia Amor Motley & I convened a dialogue on the Economics of the Common Good w/ the late Pope Francis in the Vatican. Last week, met w/ Pope Leo XIV w/ whom we will continue to implement Common Good Economics.
My next book, The Common Good Economy (out June 2026) develops this framework.
SEA aims to transform economic thinking by amplifying the voices of women economists from the Global South who have been pushing the boundaries of both theory and practice.
Apply by March 1st ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
More about SEA ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub...
5 days left to apply!
The UCL IIPP Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) is hiring a Programme Manager to advance our work on industrial strategy, green finance, and new development theories with our partners around the world.
We present a framework showing how structural capacities, organisational routines and dynamic capabilities interact to create public value. Strong strategy without learning leads to rigidity. Strong delivery without direction leads to fragmentation.
Governments face a paradox—they need stability to sustain direction over time, yet agility to adapt when conditions change. These aren't opposing forces. They're complementary capabilities that must work together.
New working paper with @rainerkattel.bsky.social: Market-Shaping States.
🚨New report out today.🚨
If we want fewer families facing homelessness, we need to be honest about what works... and what doesn’t.
Our new report looks at the evidence behind housing policy and why social housing is key to ending the housing emergency. 🗝️
Read the full report: shltr.org.uk/ifWuB
Just back from Rio, Brasília & Salvador launching @iipp-ucl.bsky.social Carnival Economics project w Brazil's Ministry of Culture.
Carnival isn’t a one-off event—it’s a year-round production economy. A case study on how culture, identity & joy sit at the centre of what a creative economy should be.
We discussed the public value of arts and culture and how Brazil's rich cultural ecosystem from samba schools to carnival offers a powerful example of how culture shapes economies and communities from the ground up!
On our final day in Brazil had the privilege of sitting down with the legendary Gilberto Gil — Bossa nova, Samba, Tropicália pioneer and former Minister of Culture.
Read the WHO Council for the Economics of Health For All final report ➡️ www.who.int/publications...
Today, I'll be speaking at the Pontifical Academy for Life International Workshop on "Healthcare for All: Sustainability and Equity" in Rome alongside speakers from the OECD, Georgetown University, Harvard Medical School and health leaders across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Health is not a by-product of economic growth. It is a fundamental human right & ultimate goal of economic activity. As the WHO Council on the Economics of Health For All argued, achieving #HealthForAll requires redesigning how we value, finance & innovate for health, & state capacity to deliver it.
When the state socialises risks through public funding, the public must share in the rewards. The task for Trump is not to abandon industrial strategy or to reactively take equity stakes but to learn what went right and wrong in Silicon Valley.
Read here ➡️ open.substack.com/pub/marianam...
More coverage of this work:
Agência Brasil ➡️ agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/radioagencia...
Valor Econômico ➡️ valor.globo.com/empresas/not...
With #Carnaval beginning tonight in Salvador, spoke to Agencia about our partnership with partnership on #CarnivalEconomics as a flagship learning platform for our work on Public Value of Arts and Culture, with the interview broadcast tonight.
19:00 BRT | @TVBrasil | Watch live on YouTube
Carnaval is where identity, belonging, dignity and collective futures are made visible—mobilising labour systems, skills pipelines and supply chains year-round. We must learn to value the immense creative work and knowledge that goes into it.