Professor Mazzucato of UCL has been awarded the 2018 Leontief prize for advancing the frontiers of economic thought along with Branko Milanovic, a Serbian-American economist.
The prize is awarded each year to leading theorists for innovative work in economics that addresses contemporary issues and has previously gone to such famed economists as John Kenneth Galbraith, a leading proponent of American liberalism whose books in the 1950s were best-sellers and Amartya Sen, a nobel prize winner.
According to Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), which makes the awards, Professor Mazzucato, who holds UCL’s chair in the economics of innovation and public value and is director of the newly-launched UCL institute for innovation & public purpose, and Dr Milanovic, are being recognized for their “path-breaking” work in innovation and global income inequality.
GDAE co-director Neva Goodwin said: “The topic of innovation receives a lot of attention these days. “What has been insufficiently recognized, before the work of Mariana Mazzucato, is the critical role of the government in innovation and hence the role of the public sector in the process of wealth creation.
“As Mazzucato points out, taxpayers have been the real venture capitalists, funding not only upstream basic science but also some of the riskiest investments downstream. Her work argues for concrete ways to make sure both the risks and the rewards are better shared so that smart growth is also more inclusive growth.”
The ceremony and lectures by the prizewinners on the theme “Globalization, Innovation and Inequality” will take place on April 17 next year at Tufts university.
