Mazzucato is one of the most interesting economists working
today. I say this because her project in the last two books focus on a ground-up
redetermination of what is important in the economy. To someone like me, who is
interested in the social generation and distribution of resources but who think
that policy makers went the wrong way in recent years (especially before 2008,
see Bernanke to Friedman: “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as
an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to
Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're
very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again. “) this book is just
catnip. So much catnip that I stayed up too late a couple of nights in a row
reading it.
Mazzucato, in this book, looks at where value was theoretically
derived historically from the physiocrats to Smith through Marx and into the
marginal revolution. She focuses the critique on the marginalists and the
composition of current GDP about how it focus to much on the market – how what
has a price has value and nothing else. For Mazzucato, this sidelines
non-market institutions like the government which are long-term value creators
but left out of market considerations because what they do doesn’t have a
price. It is a compelling argument to look at how we analyze “the economy” in a
different light.
No comments:
Post a Comment