FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year — the shortlist
“Other titles on the list are […] Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, which argues for a more sustainable form of capitalism” Andrew Hill
Economics - Innovation - Inclusive Growth - Public Purpose
The Value of Everything
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.
Value of Everything in the Media
Summer books of 2018: Economics
“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
Challenging the way our society matches risks and rewards
“The Value of Everything will rekindle a much-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in. The author argues that we must revisit the basics. She dissects the status quo and chal- lenges how our society matches risks and rewards.” Henry Friesen
Yes, Government Creates Wealth
“Economics has never accepted the idea that the public sector creates wealth. But it does—and acknowledging that can lead to sweeping change.”
Shaping the stories that rule our economy
“The economy we want to build must recognize increasing the value to and for humans as the goal. To build that economy, we need a strenuous engagement with the questions Mariana Mazzucato asks in this book, an engagement deeply informed by the history of economic thought and how we got where we are today. I found this book enormously stimulating. You will, too. Highly recommended.” Tim O’Reilly
Parasitic Capitalism Exposed
“Mariana Mazzucato’s new book is a detailed exposé of the parasitic character of modern capitalism, drawing on Karl Marx’s theory of the source of value creation. But understanding the law of value is only a first step to providing an alternative to a system that cannot overcome its inevitable tendency for periodic crises and which needs to be overthrown” Peter Taaffe
Business Books to Watch in September
“In this prescient book, a renowned economist exposes how modern capitalist economies are increasingly rewarding businesses for the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than the value they add to the economy—and why we need to instead build a capitalism that works for us all.”
Economist Mariana Mazzucato on the Downside of Shareholder Value
“A narrow definition of value—that things are worth simply what someone is willing to pay—has led to an excessive focus on shareholder value and increasing income inequality, argues the economist Mariana Mazzucato.” Leslie P. Norton
Business Book of the Year 2018 — the longlist
“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
Educational reform for Egypt 2030
“As Mariana Mazzucato, professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, reiterated in her latest work, The Value of Everything, innovation is a public-private collaborative endeavour.” Haro Karkour
Too Big to Fail to Catch the Irony
“The Value of Everything is not a beach read, but it’s an intelligent dose of critical thinking about a topic where ignorance all but guarantees we’ll end up being played. Take the time to get smart about it.”Heather Seggel
How To Fix Stagnant Wages: Dump The World’s Dumbest Idea
“The book,The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy […] offers a fundamental re-think of what constitutes real value in the economy. It traces the origins of current economic thinking from its origins in the seventeenth century to the growth of the financial sector and the financialization of the 21st-century economy. It explains how the economy steadily shifted from creating value for the benefit of all to the extraction of value for the owners of assets, and the consequences in terms of steady economic decline and worsening income inequality.” Steve Denning
When is capitalism going to end? Making a case for a new economic chapter
“Another influential writer is Mariana Mazzucato, of University College London. In her new book, The Value of Everything, she excoriates the global financial industry. We need to rethink our ideas on value, and how financialisation has turned us away from value creation to value extraction.” Hans Pienaar
Booklist review
“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
The Tory vision for a post-Brexit economy is a dead-end – but there is an alternative
“The way in which financialisation proved to be an anti-industrial strategy is admirably set out in leading economist Mariana Mazzucato’s new book The Value of Everything. In it she describes the “two faces of financialisation”.” Chi Onwurah
Mariana Mazzucato’s bold mission to reform the global economy
“In The Value of Everything, Mazzucato points out our flawed economic measures. But solutions are in short supply.” Adam Tooze
The Value of Everything review: How to end the we make, they take economy
“Mariana Mazzucato is sure the economic forces that affect our lives can serve the public interest again” Angela Nagle
City Pages Q&A: Economics professor and author Mariana Mazzucato on her latest book The Value of Everything
“University College London economist Mariana Mazzucato is on a mission to change economics with a central role for debates about “value”.” Jasper Jolly
“El Valor de Todo”: Mariana Mazzucato desnuda el “capitalismo parasitario”
“En ese sentido, el libro de Mazzucato instala una pregunta que es de plena actualidad en Chile donde la rebaja de impuestos se presenta como la gran vía para incentivar el crecimiento. ¿Por qué no se exige como condición que ese beneficio se dirija a empresas productivas que creen empleos y no se vaya a sociedades que solo ganan en la “pasada”?” Juan Andrés Guzmán
KIRKUS REVIEW
“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.”
Guaranteed jobs may not solve the Democrats’ bigger problem with many voters
“Economist Mariana Mazzucato examines this problem in her book, “The Value of Everything.” Her case studies show how, especially in banking, tech and Big Pharma, riches are found in moving money around, looting companies and gaining financial advantages by manipulating public policy.” Jon Talton
Mariana Mazzucato on making waves as an economist — and in the pool
“When she’s not tackling the failings of modern capitalism, the Italian-American economist hits the swimming pool to unwind” Delphine Strauss
Economists Are Evolving, But Old-School Textbooks Aren’t
“The trouble isn’t the latest research, but the zombie ideas that economists keep pushing. Indeed, as economist Mariana Mazzucato argues in her new book, “The Value of Everything,” ideas like the welfare theorems exert a powerful unconscious influence over the framing of a lot of policy analysis.” Mark Buchanan
Trump is a passing problem in the US – Brexit is not
“Mazzucato’s mission is to overturn the now dominant neoclassical theory of value. In the mid-19th century, she explained, an intellectual revolution occurred: rather than value determining price, price began to determine value. Until the early 1970s, “most of the financial sector wasn’t actually included in GDP. It was seen as a transfer of existing value, just as social security payments aren’t included in GDP.” ” George Eaton printed version
Meet Mariana Mazzucato, big-state capitalism’s new champion
“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
The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato – how to save capitalism
“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
Who creates a nation’s economic value?
“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
Melrose’s purchase of GKN demonstrates capitalism’s fundamental failing
“As Mariana Mazzucuto’s new book, published today, explains, our economy has been financialised and no longer rewards real value creation.” Chi Onwurah
How to retool our concept of value
“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
Perils of the free market
“Mariana Mazzucato offers an exposé of how value extractors and rent-seekers have been masquerading as value creators in the global economy. And, furthermore, how the conventional wisdom has indulged them in this.” Fran Boait
What CEOs are reading: April 2018
“[…]the normally iron-clad security of shareholder value is challenged as a material motivator, a theme further explored by Mariana Mazzucato in The Value of Everything, Makers and Takers in The Global Economy, who argues that we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from to heal a sick system.” Richard Kilgarriff
VALUE OF EVERYTHING ON VIDEO/AUDIO
Bloomberg
Understanding the Changing Calculation of Value
British Library
Mazzucato’s book talk with Paul Mason
CHANNEL 4 NEWS
A ‘parasitic’ system in need of change
Bloomberg
Rethinking Capitalism to Create Global Value
The Causes of the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Signs of a Crisis to Come
“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.”
Who Creates Value in an Economy?
“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
Surveillance: Rogoff & Mazzucato On The Next Crisis
“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.” “
Economy Wrongly Rewards Value Extractors Vs Creators
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
A New Way to Calculate Economic Value
“Mariana Mazzucato argues it’s time to reform how economies determine value to create a capitalism that benefits more people.” Listen
Is the Government More Entrepreneurial Than You Think?
“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 backward.” Listen
BBC Radio 4 – Start the Week: Dark Satanic Mills
“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.”
Value of Everything Excerpts
It’s a magic number
“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
Capitalism’s greatest weakness? It confuses price with value
“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.”
Book Talks for Value of Everything
What’s Now San Francisco – Could Tech Rethink the Value of Data and Who Profits from It?
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.
Bloomberg BETA
Pier 3, The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94109
Discussion with Tim O’ Reilly followed by audience Q&A and book signing.
Open Society Foundation – The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy
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.
World Bank EFI Chief Economist Learning Seminar
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?
British Library
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 Festival
Hay, United Kingdom – Mariana Mazzucato talks to Dharshini David about her new book The Value of Everything.
RSA
London, United Kingdom – Presentation of the book The Value of Everything with RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor.
Resolution Foundation
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?”
LSE Public Lecture
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.