Tuesday, August 13, 2013

INET — Mazzucato and Wray: Making Finance Work for Innovation (video)

This episode features Institute for New Economic Thinking grantees Mariana Mazzucato andRandall Wray, who are working together on an Institute grant on how to best finance the innovation we need in the 21st century.
Building on the seminal work of Joseph Schumpeter and Hyman Minsky, Institute for New Economic Thinking grantees Marianna Mazzucato and Randall Wray are bringing the disparate intellectual traditions of finance and innovation together in the search for insights about how finance might better serve the purpose of capital development. A key question in their exploration is whether financial innovations support value creation in the real economy or if they extract value from the real (productive) economy and, as a result, undermine the value creation and capital development process.
Wray and Mazzucato both have unique career trajectories for an economist. Wray came to economics relatively late in his academic career after studying psychology as an undergraduate, and Mazzucato studied history before finding the discipline. These diverse backgrounds have a strong influence on their research, as both Wray and Mazzucato approach economics as outsiders. Specifically, Wray’s perspective is informed by Minsky’s work on money and finance, while Mazzucato’s view is deeply influenced by Schumpeter’s thinking on innovation.
Together, they offer a unique perspective on the economics of innovation and on how well the financial sector is serving society. Is finance engaged in "creative destruction" or is it's speculation really a case of "destructive creation?" Watch the interview to see what they have to say!
INET
Mazzucato and Wray: Making Finance Work for Innovation (video)
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, UMKC and Mariana Mazzucato, RM Phillips Professor of Science and Technology at the University of Sussex

So much for the myth that MMT downplays the role of private investment in the economy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, well. I had no idea they were working together. This is great news.

Unknown said...

So much for the myth that MMT downplays the role of private investment in the economy.

Of course it doesn't since the MMT folks support the government-backed counterfeiting cartel for the sake of the so-called creditworthy. Mosler and Co just want to tweak it a bit to save the counterfeiters from themselves. Instead, banks should be purely private businesses for sophisticated investors ONLY and the rest of us should be in a Postal Savings Bank away from the sharks.

And I dispute that such "investment" is sound anyway since it is financed by stolen goods.

Ramanan said...

Nice letter by Keynes to Roosevelt here where he talks of treating businessmen as domesticated animals... from Mariana Mazzucato's blog:

http://entrepreneurialstate.anthempressblog.com/?page_id=6

Ramanan said...

"Businessmen have a different set of delusions from politicians, and need, therefore, different handling. They are, however, much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity, easily persuaded to be ‘patriots’, perplexed, bemused, indeed terrified, yet only too anxious to take a cheerful view, vain perhaps but very unsure of themselves, pathetically responsive to a kind word. You could do anything you liked with them, if you would treat them (even the big ones), not as wolves or tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish. It is a mistake to think that they are more immoral than politicians. If you work them into the surly, obstinate, terrified mood, of which domestic animals, wrongly handled, are so capable, the nation’s burdens will not get carried to market; and in the end public opinion will veer their way…"