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Public Purpose: Industrial Policy's Comeback and Government's role in Shared Prosperity
How governments can spur growth and innovation to solve their greatest challenges—from green energy to national security to building resilient health systems.
Known around the world for challenging mainstream economics, economist Mariana Mazzucato believes, as the Financial Times writes, that “the public sector can and should be a cocreator of wealth that actively steers growth to meet its goals.” In Public Purppse, she calls on governments to create the economies we need today.
Mazzucato's challenge leads off a debate on the revival of industrial policy—roughly defined as deliberate government action to re(shape) the economy. Industrial policy has fallen out of favor in recent decades as economists defer to free markets to produce innovation and growth. Yet today, thinkers across the political spectrum have begun expressing new interest in industrial policy as a way to address the most serious problems of our times: from national security and climate change, to the market's underfunding of public goods, to sluggish economic growth and labor market dysfunction.
Public Purpose makes a compelling case for industrial policy—what it is, and why we need it now. Addressing investment, innovation, supply chains, and growth, it provides a robust vision of a renewed industrial policy, and what it can offer the US economy in the face of climate change and a global pandemic.
Known around the world for challenging mainstream economics, economist Mariana Mazzucato believes, as the Financial Times writes, that “the public sector can and should be a cocreator of wealth that actively steers growth to meet its goals.” In Public Purppse, she calls on governments to create the economies we need today.
Mazzucato's challenge leads off a debate on the revival of industrial policy—roughly defined as deliberate government action to re(shape) the economy. Industrial policy has fallen out of favor in recent decades as economists defer to free markets to produce innovation and growth. Yet today, thinkers across the political spectrum have begun expressing new interest in industrial policy as a way to address the most serious problems of our times: from national security and climate change, to the market's underfunding of public goods, to sluggish economic growth and labor market dysfunction.
Public Purpose makes a compelling case for industrial policy—what it is, and why we need it now. Addressing investment, innovation, supply chains, and growth, it provides a robust vision of a renewed industrial policy, and what it can offer the US economy in the face of climate change and a global pandemic.
- GenresEconomics
208 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
13 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Mariana Mazzucato
25 books1,016 followersMariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she directs the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Her best selling books include The Entrepreneurial State, The Value of Everything and Mission Economy. Her many prizes include the 2020 John von Neumann Award and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All and a member of the UN High Level Advisory Board for Economic and Social Affairs.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 19, 2025
Public Purpose es una discusión sobre el futuro de la política industrial. Refrita los argumentos principales de dos de mis libros favoritos sobre el tema en los últimos años: Mission Economy de Mariana Mazzucato e Innovation in Real Places de Dan Breznitz, a los que se suman opiniones de otros autores que critican o amplian estas miradas.
June 19, 2025
Picked up for research on a report for work but actually really enjoyed the forum style! More books should present counterarguments and rebuttals like this instead of pushing one narrative.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews