Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Political Quarterly Monograph Series)

"Thought provoking and fresh - this book challenges how we think about economics.”
Gillian Tett, Financial Times

For further information about recent publicity events and media coverage for Rethinking Capitalism please visit http://marianamazzucato.com/rethinking-capitalism/

Western capitalism is in crisis. For decades investment has been falling, living standards have stagnated or declined, and inequality has risen dramatically. Economic policy has neither reformed the financial system nor restored stable growth. Climate change meanwhile poses increasing risks to future prosperity. 

In this book some of the world’s leading economists propose new ways of thinking about capitalism. In clear and compelling prose, each chapter shows how today’s deep economic problems reflect the inadequacies of orthodox economic theory and the failure of policies informed by it. The chapters examine a range of contemporary economic issues, including fiscal and monetary policy, financial markets and business behaviour, inequality and privatisation, and innovation and environmental change. The authors set out alternative economic approaches which better explain how capitalism works, why it often doesn’t, and how it can be made more innovative, inclusive and sustainable. Outlining a series of far-reaching policy reforms, Rethinking Capitalism offers a powerful challenge to mainstream economic debate, and new ideas to transform it.  

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor in the School of Public Policy at University College London. 

Professor Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London (UCL) where she is establishing a new Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (launching Autumn 2017).

Further information:

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor in the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London. An environmental economist and political theorist, his work has focused on the political economy of environmental change. His books include The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future (Pluto Press, 1991), Greening the Millennium? The New Politics of the Environment (ed, Blackwell, 1997), The Politics of the Real World (Earthscan 1996) and Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending (Fabian Society 2000).

From 2004-10 he was a Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, responsible for domestic and international policy on environment, energy and climate change, and before that (2004-2007) a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the UK Treasury. He was formerly General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Co-Editor of The Political Quarterly and a research fellow at Lancaster University and the London School of Economics. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and Senior Adviser to the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, which he helped to found.

Professor Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London (UCL) where she is establishing a new Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (launching Autumn 2017). Mazzucato’s highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (Anthem 2013; Public Affairs, 2015) was on the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times. She is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy and the 2015 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis and in 2013 she was named as one of the '3 most important thinkers about innovation' in the New Republic.  

She has advised policy makers around the world on innovation-led growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors; the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Economics of Innovation and SITRA’s (Finnish Innovation Fund) Advisory Panel.  Her current research projects include two funded by the EC Horizon 2020 programme:  Innovation-fuelled, Sustainable, Inclusive Growth (ISIGrowth) and Distributed Global Financial Systems for Society (Dolfins) and a new project on Rethinking Medical Innovation by the Open Society Foundations. Her recent research includes projects funded by the Ford Foundation and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and work commissioned by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Brazilian Ministry for Science and Technology.

She is currently writing The Value of Everything which will be published by Penguin’s Allen Lane in 2017.