WOMAN on a MISSION
Mariana Mazzucato is the world’s scariest economist, at least according to a 2017 Times profile that describes – with reluctant admiration – her talent for tearing orthodox economists to shreds on live TV panel discussions. When I talk to her, she’s cooking dinner, so there’s a scraping of knives punctuated by blasts of water down the phone line.
“My husband is on a film shoot for a month,” she says, “and I have four children to feed.” So the professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London slashes and ribbons her vegetables as she tells me how to fix capitalism.
It’s not unusual for high-profile economists to become political influencers, but what’s interesting about Mazzucato is that she has emerged as an important international thinker despite her left-wing views. The author of three acclaimed books, she is unafraid to stir the pot, challenging long-held beliefs about the roles of the state and private sector in creating dynamic economies.
In the US, her message that governments should use their power to lead innovation for the public good has influenced an array of politicians from Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Republican Senator Marco Rubio. She was an adviser to former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and her ideas are studied and discussed not only in New Zealand’s Labour Government, but also in the British Conservative Party.
Mazzucato concluded that the conventional wisdom was catastrophically wrong. The state could innovate, she argued.
Dominic Cummings, architect of the Brexit campaign and Boris Johnson’s former senior adviser, became obsessed with her breakthrough book , which inspired the development of the UK’s new multibillion-dollar Advanced Research and Invention Agency. (“He was … excited about it,” she says, diplomatically.) She also advises the South African government and the European Commission; a day aft
