Changing values – Towards a new economy?

Our ideas of value, what it is and how it is generated in the economy, have changed over time. Today's dominant school of thought, neoclassical economics, lost sight of these decisive questions, as Mariana Mazzucato argues in her 2018 'The Value of Everything'. But there are some very recent promising signs that we are starting to have a renewed debate about value and how we want the economy to work for all of us.

Policy innovation at work

Today I'll present a timely example and, I hope, an inspiring glimpse of how European policy-making actually works. It goes like this: On 4 July, economics professor Mariana Mazzucato spoke in Helsinki about the mission-oriented approach to research and innovation that the Union should adopt. Questions will come readily to your mind: Why now? Why there? Why she? And of course: So what? Let's go through.

Economic trajectories into the future

The Digital Revolution started only about 40 years ago. While much of it is still in the future, some of the challenges and opportunities ahead are already clearly visible. In essence, there are two major forces at work: One is the breakthrough of information as the next dominant economic fuel, the other is the diversity of economic realities around the globe. Today, I'll take a deeper look at this diversity and how it might evolve in the future.

What drives an economy in the very long run?

Just a few weeks ago, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the decision to award this year's Nobel Prize in Economics to Paul Romer for integrating technological change into macroeconomic analysis. That's a good reason for thinking through the long-term history of innovative activity, for investigating how technological change itself changed over time, and what the future might hold for us.

Seeing possibilities

At a global scale, how do you perceive the path of mankind? Getting better? Getting worse? Getting nowhere? Listening to our instincts, we are inclined to hold a gloomy, even bleak view of the current state and our future prospects. But is such pessimism at all justified? Should we rely on our guts? And what do the facts tell us? The big trends that shape the development of populations and define their health and wealth, these drivers of societal progress are the focus of Hans Rosling's lifelong mission as a public health practitioner, researcher, and teacher.