Modern economies reward activities that extract value rather than create it. This must change to insure a capitalism that works for us all.
In this scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value has been determined and reveals how the difference between value creation and value extraction has become increasingly blurry. Mariana Mazzucato argues that this blurriness allowed certain actors in the economy to portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they were just moving existing value around or, even worse, destroying it.
The book uses case studies–from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma–to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion between rents and profits, a difference that distorts the measurements of growth and GDP.
The lesson here is urgent and sobering: to rescue our economy from the next, inevitable crisis and to foster longterm economic growth, we will need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in our society.
Ahead of the launch of the 2018 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize, this fifth series discusses the six shortlisted books with its authors. In this first episode, FT columnists Andrew Hill and Martin Wolf talk to Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Listen
Economist Mariana Mazzucato discusses her book and the need for new ways to measure economic performance.
“Mariana Mazzucato, an Italian-American economist is in Australia to deliver the John Menadue oration for the Centre for Policy Development. The lecture is called, Can the State Deliver?” Listen
“What happens when we confuse price with value? We end up undervaluing care. We pollute more. And the financial sector is allowed to brag about how productive it is—while often just moving around existing value, created by others. Most importantly we end up with a form of capitalism that rewards value extraction activities over value creation, increasing inequality in the process.” Listen
“We all know the standard story: our economy would be more dynamic if only the government would get out of the way. The economist Mariana Mazzucato says we’ve got that story backwards.” Listen
“Economist Mariana Mazzucato, author of the new book “The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy” digs into the nuts and bolts of what cause the 2008 financial crisis. She also explains how there are troubling signs of another crisis to come sooner than we’d hope.”
“Economist Mariana Mazzucato, argues that the reason is that economic policy continues to be informed by neoliberal ideology and its academic cousin, “public choice” theory, rather than by historical experience.” Listen
“We start off on a segment from our TV show with Ken Rogoff, Harvard Professor & Former IMF Chief Economist, and Mariana Mazzucato, University College London Professor & Author of “The Value of Everything.” “
Mariana Mazzucato discusses her new book “The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy.” Hosted by Pimm Fox and Lisa Abramowicz. Listen
“Mariana Mazzucato argues it’s time to reform how economies determine value to create a capitalism that benefits more people.” Listen
“The economist Mariana Mazzucato is calling for a reform of capitalism, to replace taking with making. She argues that the global economy has become a parasitic system in which value-extraction is more highly rewarded than value-creation.”
Mazzucato, M. (2019) “El Valor De Las Cosas”
Taurus, ISBN 843062211X
Mazzucato, M., 2019 “Wie Kommt Der Wert In Die Welt?”
Campus, ISBN 9783593509983
Mazzucato, M. (2019) “O Valor de Tudo”
Temas e Debates, ISBN 9789896445447
Mazzucato, M. (2108) “Il Valore di Tutto”
Laterza, ISBN 9788858127841
Mazzucato, M. (2019) “Podjetniška Država”
UMco, ISBN 9789617050264
Mazzucato, M. (2018) “De Waarde Van Alles”
ISBN 9789046823798
Understanding the Changing Calculation of Value
Mazzucato’s book talk with Paul Mason
Mazzucato’s presentation talk at the 5×15 event
Keynote: Redefining Economic Value
A ‘parasitic’ system in need of change
Rethinking Capitalism to create global value
“An inquiry into the nature of value in an economy might not seem an obvious place to begin. Yet The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, by Mariana Mazzucato, helps establish the intellectual roots of the odd history of the past decade.” Ryan Avent
“Other titles on the list are […] Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, which argues for a more sustainable form of capitalism” Andrew Hill
“Mariana Mazzucato’s thought-provoking The Value of Everything, which argues for a more sustainable form of capitalism, “pushes us to get away from the simplistic creed that markets are always good and governments always bad”, according to the FT review.” Andrew Hill
“Mazzucato’s trenchant analysis is a compelling call to reinvent value as a key concept to help us achieve the world we all want.” Robert Costanza
“Someone should make a musical out of this book. That is quite unlikely, I grant you, but not as unlikely as it sounds. In 1893 the Savoy theatre staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s penultimate operetta, Utopia, Limited […] It is time to rework the idea and Mariana Mazzucato is a candidate to write the libretto.” Philip Collins pdf version
“In The Value of Everything, published last week, Mazzucato sharpens her focus, not only lauding the role of ‘mission-oriented’ public investment, but honing her critique of the private sector too.” Liam Halligan
“A British economics professor is debunking again; this time, her target is the conventional wisdom that so-called wealth creators deserve to accumulate massive riches.”
“In The Value of Everything, Mazzucato points out our flawed economic measures. But solutions are in short supply.” Adam Tooze
“Since the economic crisis in 2008, Mazzucato notes that the rise of entrepreneurship, along with the past deregulation of financial industries, is fueling the fire of economic inequality and an economy without value. ” Jennifer Adams
“A stimulating analysis of the underlying causes of inequality and growth which forces us to confront long-held beliefs about how economies work and who benefits” Martin Wolf pdf version
“In this thought-provoking book, Mariana Mazzucato, professor at University College London, argues that it is far too easy for those operating in the contemporary market economy to get rich by extracting value from those who actually create it, not by adding it themselves. To understand this, we need to return to the question with which economics began: what creates value? When we answer this properly, we will realise that an important part of the answer is: government rather than much of contemporary finance.” Martin Wolf
“Mariana Mazzucato argues that the state itself can be, and often has been, a tremendous force for wealth creation and radical risk taking and technological innovation” Angela Neagle
“Mazzucato bores in on how economic theories have consistently failed over its history to clearly delineate the difference between value-creation and value-extraction.” Hazel Henderson
“Some heterodox economists today argue that growth will fall if finance becomes too big relative to the rest of the economy (industry) because real profits come from the production of new goods and services rather than from simple transfers of money earned from those goods and services.40 To ‘rebalance’ the economy, the argument runs, we must allow genuine profits from production to win over rents–which, as we can see here, is exactly the argument Ricardo made 200 years ago, and John Maynard Keynes was to make 100 years later.41” Academia Magazine
“A book excerpt and interview with Mariana Mazzucato, author of “The Value of Everything” “
“By losing our ability to recognize the difference between value creation and value extraction, we have made it easier for some to call themselves value creators and in the process extract value.” pdf version
“Only with a clear debate about value can rent-extracting activities in every sector, including the public one, be better identified and deprived of political and ideological strength.”
Toronto, Canada – Talk titled “The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy”
San Francisco, United States – Mazzucato to deliver a seminar on rethinking value at the Long Now Foundation
Aspen, United States – Mauzzucato is one of the key speakers for the Aspen Ideas Festival 2019
Oxford, United Kingdom – Talk and Q&A with Professor Mazzucato, hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government
Dublin, Eire – Talk title: “The Value of Everything”.
London, United Kingdom – Talk title: The Value of Everything
Sheffield, United Kingdom – University of Sheffield, lecture title: “The Value of Everything”
Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange, 425 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA 94107
One way to understand the plight of the tech world right now is to pull back and understand the field of economics in the last 400 years. For much of that time the field has debated where value in the economy actually comes from – such as land, labor, capital. And crucially, what the difference is between value creation and value extraction. According to economist Mariana Mazzucato, our featured guest at September’s What’s Now: San Francisco, it is necessary first to publicly debate what types of activities really add value to our economy—and how to limit value extraction that masquerades as wealth creation—so that we can create a new form of capitalism that works for us all, including in the tech industry.
Pier 3, The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94109
Discussion with Tim O’ Reilly followed by audience Q&A and book signing.
Open Society Foundations, 224 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Moderated by Jeff Madrick – author, director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative, and senior fellow at The Century Foundation.
The 2008 global financial crisis revealed that modern economies reward activities that extract economic value rather than create it. Join us for a discussion with Mazzucato as she demonstrates how companies from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma have used foggy notions of value to create confusion between rents and profits—thereby allowing themselves to be portrayed as value creators, while in reality they are merely moving existing value around or, even worse, destroying it. Only by debating and ultimately reclaiming the true meaning of value will it be possible to generate a fairer economy that benefits all of society. A reception, with light refreshments, will be held from 5:30–6:00 p.m.
1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433
Please RSVP to Brooke.Parsons@hbgusa.com
Today, the financial sector and the ‘financialized’ world breeds a mentality that distorts economic growth and increases wealth disparity. Top executives choose to spend a greater proportion of profits on share buy-backs rather than on investing in the long-term future of the business. They call it value creation but the reality is often the opposite: value extraction. So who decided that they are creating value? What definition of value is used to distinguish value creation from value extraction, or even from value destruction?
London, United Kingdom – Presentation of the book The Value of Everything, as part of a public lecture series between the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and the British Library on the theme of Rethinking Public Value & Public Purpose. Professor Mazzucato speaks on new book about the concept of value, with audience Q&A chaired by Paul Mason.
Hay, United Kingdom – Mariana Mazzucato talks to Dharshini David about her new book The Value of Everything.
London, United Kingdom – Presentation of the book The Value of Everything with RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor.
London, United Kingdom – In conversation with Lord Willetts, Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation, on the new book The Value of Everything. “Wealth creation in the 21st century: who is and isn’t a doing it?”
London, United Kingdom – ‘The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy’ Podcast
Professor Mazzucato with the first copy of her book The Value of Everything at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
