Mariana Mazzucato
Mariana Mazzucato
Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London (UCL), and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose, London, UK. Author of The Public Value of Arts and Culture: Investing in Arts and Culture to Reimagine Economic Growth in the 21st Century.
The Public Value of Arts and Culture in Reimagining and Redirecting Economic Growth in the 21st Century
In an era marked by complex, interconnected challenges, the question is no longer whether the state should intervene, but how and toward what ends. Arts and culture, from visual arts to music and design, are the foundations for reimagining alternative futures, fostering civic identity, and mobilizing collective action. Yet they remain undervalued and thus underinvested in.
Arts and culture should not be peripheral to economic development, but can be essential to both stimulating and directing economic growth toward more creative, inclusive, and sustainable societies, and generating dynamic spillovers across the economy and society. Despite their well-documented benefits, arts and culture are consistently undervalued by conventional evaluation methods like static cost-benefit analysis, seldom acknowledged for their contributions to narrow metrics like GDP, and rarely valued in terms of their market-shaping abilities. As a result, cultural funding is the first to be cut during austerity – precisely when society most needs a renewed sense of purpose and imagination. Historical examples such as the Bauhaus and U.S. Works Progress Administration, as well as contemporary initiatives like Mexico City’s Utopias, demonstrate the transformative power of culture in redefining how we imagine and build public life. To tackle crises such as climate breakdown, technological governance and corporate rent-seeking, a paradigm shift is needed.
We thus must move away from viewing arts and culture as a cost and toward recognizing them as an investment. They are both a means and an end: a goal of economic policy and a precondition for transformation. This requires new coalitions to develop mechanisms, narratives and social contracts that empower governments and cultural institutions to: i) recognize and nurture culture’s role in directing economic growth; ii) place it at the center of policy and industrial strategies; iii) measure its dynamic public value beyond cost-benefit; and iv) invest in cultural ecosystems beyond the creative industries. By reframing the economics of arts and culture, we can build societies that flourish and thrive.
Biography:
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD, CBE) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei. In 2025, she was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to economics in the King’s Birthday Honours List. Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing ‘more humanity’ to the world.
Her award-winning books include: The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013 The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). She advises policymakers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her policy roles include: Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, member of the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the Brazilian 2024 G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change, and Special Representative of President Ramaphosa to the 2025 G20 Taskforce 1 on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialization, Employment, and Reduced Inequality.