All Thinkers

Mariana Mazzucato

Mariana Mazzucato is an economist. She was born in Rome, Italy, in 1968. Her father was a physicist, and when she was a child the family moved to the United States, where her father worked at Princeton University. She grew up mostly in the United States and later returned to Europe. She holds both Italian and American citizenship. Mazzucato studied history and international relations as an undergraduate, then moved into economics for her doctorate. Today she is a professor at University College London, in Britain, where she founded a research centre called the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She became widely known in 2013 with her book 'The Entrepreneurial State'. It argued that governments, not just private companies, are major drivers of new technology. Later books include 'The Value of Everything' (2018), 'Mission Economy' (2021), and 'The Big Con' (2023). Mazzucato is unusual among economists for her direct influence on real policy. She has advised governments and international bodies around the world, including in Britain, Italy, South Africa, and the European Union, and she works with the United Nations and other organisations. She is also a strong communicator who reaches a wide public. As a living, working economist, her ideas are still developing and are actively debated.

Origin
Italy / United States
Lifespan
born 1968
Era
Contemporary
Subjects
Economics Innovation Policy Public Sector And The State Value Theory Political Economy
Skills
Critical Thinking Problem Solving Research Skills Creative Expression Ethical Thinking
Why They Matter

Mazzucato matters because she has changed a common story about where progress comes from. The usual story says private business takes the risks and creates the new things, while government just sets rules and gets in the way.

Mazzucato challenged this directly

She showed that many breakthrough technologies, including parts of the modern smartphone and the early internet, were funded by governments taking big risks long before private firms got involved. Her point is not that government does everything. It is that the public sector is often a bold risk-taker, and that this role is hidden in the usual story.

From this come her other big ideas.

She argues for 'mission-oriented' policy

Governments setting large goals, like reaching clean energy, and organising effort around them. She asks who really creates value in an economy, and who merely captures or extracts it. She criticises the way some firms and consultants take rewards without adding much.

Mazzucato's influence is large but contested. Supporters say she has corrected an unfair picture and given governments confidence to act. Critics worry she understates government failure and the risk of waste. As a living economist, her legacy is still being written.

Key Ideas
1
Who Is Mariana Mazzucato?
2
The Entrepreneurial State
3
Who Creates Value?
Key Quotations
"History tells us that innovation is an outcome of a massive collective effort, not just from a narrow group of young people in California."
— Mariana Mazzucato, from her public writing and talks on innovation
Here Mazzucato challenges a popular image: that new technology comes mainly from a few brilliant founders in places like Silicon Valley. She argues the truth is wider. Innovation is a 'collective effort', involving governments, public research, universities, and many workers over long periods. For students, this is a useful correction to a familiar story. It does not deny that individual inventors matter. It says that focusing only on them hides the large, shared, often public effort that real innovation actually depends on.
"The state has been the engine behind many of the riskiest and most courageous early investments."
— Paraphrased from Mariana Mazzucato, 'The Entrepreneurial State', 2013
This summarises the central claim of 'The Entrepreneurial State'. The 'state' means government. Mazzucato is saying that government has often been the bold investor making the riskiest early bets, the ones private firms were not yet willing to make. For students, the quotation flips a common assumption. We usually call business 'brave' and government 'cautious'. Mazzucato points to a long record suggesting that, for the riskiest and earliest steps, it has frequently been the other way around.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When teaching students to question a popular story
How to introduce
Start with the common story that private business creates new technology while government just gets in the way. Then introduce Mazzucato's challenge: that governments funded many breakthrough technologies first, including parts of the modern smartphone. Ask students to examine which story the evidence supports. This teaches a core critical thinking habit. A story can be widely repeated and still be incomplete, and good thinking means checking the popular version against the actual record.
Problem Solving When teaching students to organise effort around a big goal
How to introduce
Explain Mazzucato's idea of 'mission-oriented' policy: setting one big, clear goal, like the old space programmes did, and organising many efforts around reaching it. Give students a large challenge and ask them to break it into a mission with smaller coordinated tasks. This teaches an ambitious style of problem solving. Instead of only fixing small problems as they appear, students learn to set a bold direction first and then pull effort towards it.
Creative Expression When teaching students to explain ideas to a wide audience
How to introduce
Point out that Mazzucato reaches large public audiences because she explains economics in vivid, clear language and memorable phrases, like 'investor of first resort'. Show students one of her phrases and discuss why it sticks. Then ask them to coin a short, clear phrase for an idea of their own. This teaches that communication is a real skill. Mazzucato's influence comes partly from making complex economics easy to grasp and hard to forget.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, Mazzucato gives many public talks and interviews that are freely available online and present her core ideas in clear, accessible language. 'The Entrepreneurial State' (2013) is her best-known book and lays out the central argument; the early chapters are the most approachable. Because she is a contemporary figure, students should also read short pieces by her critics, so the debate is visible from the start.

Key Ideas
1
Mission-Oriented Policy
2
Risks and Rewards
3
Shaping Markets, Not Just Fixing Them
Key Quotations
"We have lost the ability to talk about value, and instead only talk about price."
— Paraphrased from Mariana Mazzucato, 'The Value of Everything', 2018
Mazzucato draws a sharp distinction between 'value' and 'price'. Price is just what something sells for. Value, in her sense, is its real, useful worth to society. She worries that modern economics has collapsed the two, treating anything with a high price as automatically valuable. For students, this is a demanding idea. It asks them to separate two things we usually run together, and to keep asking, behind any price tag, whether real value was actually created or simply charged for.
"If we want a different kind of economy, we must be willing to direct it, not just to fix it after things go wrong."
— Paraphrased from Mariana Mazzucato, 'Mission Economy', 2021
This captures Mazzucato's argument for an active, directing government. The mainstream view says government should mostly wait and 'fix' problems markets create. Mazzucato says that is not enough to get real change. If a society wants a genuinely different economy, government must help set its direction. For students, the quotation marks a clear dividing line in economic thinking, between a cautious, reactive role for the state and Mazzucato's bolder, directive one. It is also exactly where critics warn of the dangers of getting the direction wrong.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When teaching the difference between value and price
How to introduce
Introduce Mazzucato's distinction between 'value', the real useful worth of something, and 'price', simply what it sells for. Ask students to find examples where price and real value seem to come apart in either direction. This teaches careful critical thinking about a distinction people usually blur. The goal is a lasting habit: when students see a price, they learn to ask separately whether genuine value was created, rather than assuming the two are the same.
Ethical Thinking When discussing fairness between public risk and private reward
How to introduce
Present Mazzucato's argument that when government funds risky innovation, the public shares the risk, but private firms often take nearly all the reward. Ask students whether this is fair, and how rewards could be shared more justly without discouraging useful investment. This opens a genuine ethical discussion inside economics. It helps students see that questions of risk and reward are not only technical, but also questions of justice about who gives and who gets.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, 'The Value of Everything' (2018) sets out her argument about value and price and is written for a general audience. 'Mission Economy' (2021) develops her case for mission-oriented government. For balance, students should pair these with serious critical reviews from economists who disagree, since her work is actively contested and the disagreement is part of understanding her.

Key Ideas
1
The Critics' Case
2
Studying a Living Thinker
3
Rethinking Value Itself
Key Quotations
"When risks are taken collectively, the rewards should also be shared collectively."
— Paraphrased from Mariana Mazzucato's writing on risk, reward, and the public's stake in innovation
This states Mazzucato's fairness principle. When the public, through government, helps fund risky innovation, the public has shared the risk. So, she argues, the public should also share in the rewards if that innovation succeeds, rather than seeing nearly all the profit go to private firms. For advanced students, the line raises hard practical questions. How exactly should the public share in rewards, and could doing so discourage useful private investment? The principle is clear; designing fair and workable ways to apply it is genuinely difficult.
"Government should not just be a lender of last resort, but an investor of first resort."
— Attributed to Mariana Mazzucato; a much-repeated phrase summarising her view of the state's role
This neat phrase contrasts two roles. 'Lender of last resort' is the cautious idea that government steps in only at the end, in an emergency, when everything else has failed. Mazzucato wants the opposite: an 'investor of first resort', government putting money in at the very start, when an idea is riskiest and most uncertain. For advanced students, the quotation captures her whole challenge to mainstream thinking in one line, and it also marks the exact point where the debate about government's proper role becomes sharpest.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Research Skills When teaching students to seek out the strongest counter-arguments
How to introduce
Lay out Mazzucato's case for an active, market-shaping state, then deliberately walk students through the serious criticisms: that she understates government failure, that politicians may pick missions badly, and that private firms add more than she credits. Ask students to weigh both sides. This teaches a vital research skill. Studying an influential thinker well means actively searching for the best arguments against them, not just collecting support for their view.
Critical Thinking When discussing how to judge a thinker whose work is unfinished
How to introduce
Remind students that Mazzucato is a living economist whose ideas are still developing and whose influence on real governments is still playing out. Ask: how should we study a thinker when we cannot yet see the results of their work? This teaches intellectual honesty about uncertainty. Students learn to describe arguments and debates fairly while resisting the urge to deliver a final verdict on a story that is still being written.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Mazzucato thinks government should run the whole economy.

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What to teach instead

She does not. Mazzucato is not arguing for the state to replace private business or to centrally plan everything. Her argument is that government plays a bigger and bolder role than the usual story admits, especially as a risk-taking early investor in new technology. She still expects a major role for private firms and markets. Her position is about correcting an unfair picture of the state and rebalancing the partnership between public and private, not about abolishing the private sector.

Common misconception

Mazzucato claims private companies do not matter for innovation.

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What to teach instead

This overstates her view. Mazzucato fully accepts that private companies are important, especially in developing and scaling technologies and bringing them to ordinary users. Her point is narrower: that the riskiest, earliest investments are often made by government, and that this public role is hidden in the popular story. She is adjusting the balance of credit, not denying that the private sector plays a real and necessary part in innovation.

Common misconception

Mazzucato's ideas are accepted by economists as settled fact.

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What to teach instead

They are not settled, and an honest account says so. Mazzucato is influential and widely read, but her work is actively debated. Serious critics argue that she understates government failure, that 'picking missions' can be misused by politicians, and that she underrates the private sector's contribution. Mazzucato has replies to these points, and the argument continues. Students should treat her ideas as an important and contested position in a live debate, not as a closed case.

Common misconception

Mazzucato's main idea is brand new in economics.

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What to teach instead

The packaging is fresh, but the roots are old. Mazzucato's deeper questions, about who really creates value and what counts as genuine wealth, connect to a long history of economic thought, including classical economists who debated value centuries ago. Her contribution is to revive these older questions, apply them to modern technology and the state, and communicate them powerfully to today's audiences. Treating her work as having no history misses how she is reopening debates economics had partly set aside.

Intellectual Connections
In Dialogue With
Milton Friedman
Friedman argued that government action is usually clumsy and that markets, left fairly free, work best. Mazzucato argues almost the opposite about innovation: that government is often the bold risk-taker and should actively shape markets, not just step back. They represent two clearly opposed views of the state's proper economic role. Reading them together gives students a sharp, modern version of the long argument about how active government should be.
In Dialogue With
Friedrich Hayek
Hayek argued that government cannot gather the scattered knowledge needed to direct an economy well, so it should not try. Mazzucato argues that government can and should set bold missions and steer innovation. Their disagreement is deep and direct: it is about whether the state can know enough and act well enough to shape an economy on purpose. Reading them together places Mazzucato inside one of the central debates in economic thought.
Develops
John Maynard Keynes
Keynes argued that government has an active and necessary role in managing the economy, especially when private demand is weak. Mazzucato develops this tradition in a new direction. She extends the case for an active state from managing demand to driving innovation and shaping the direction of growth. Reading them together shows a line of thought, from Keynes's active government to Mazzucato's entrepreneurial, mission-setting state.
Complements
Joan Robinson
Robinson insisted that economics is never fully neutral and was willing to challenge the mainstream from within. Mazzucato continues in that spirit, questioning accepted assumptions about value and about the state, and pressing the field to reconsider its foundations. Both are women who built major reputations by pushing against the comfortable centre of economics. Reading them together connects a mid-century heterodox economist to a leading contemporary one.
Develops
Thorstein Veblen
Veblen distinguished value-creating 'industry' from money-seeking 'business', insisting the two are not the same. Mazzucato develops a very similar concern for the modern world, asking who genuinely creates value and who merely extracts it. Both refuse to assume that earning money and creating real worth are identical. Reading them together shows an old institutionalist question being carried forward and applied to today's economy of technology and finance.
Complements
Amartya Sen
Sen pushed economics to ask what economic life is really for, focusing on people's real capabilities rather than on output alone. Mazzucato pushes economics to ask what genuinely counts as value and to direct the economy towards shared goals. Both resist letting economics shrink into narrow, value-free technique. Reading them together shows two contemporary efforts to widen economics towards bigger human and social questions.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, students should read Mazzucato's books alongside the academic and policy debate they have generated, including critiques focused on government failure and on the risks of mission-setting. Her later work, including 'The Big Con' (2023) on the consulting industry and her writing on a 'common good' economy, shows how her thinking continues to develop. Because she is a living, working economist who advises real governments, any assessment should be treated as provisional, and her connection to older debates about value in classical economics is worth tracing directly.