IIPP Director Mariana Mazzucato to give LSE public lecture on new book The Value of Everything

Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value – what it is, why it matters to us – is simply no longer discussed. In her new book, The Value of Everything, which she will discuss in this lecture, Prof Mariana Mazzucato argues that if we are to reform capitalism, we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. 

Which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic – that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

At the heart of today’s financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value-extraction is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. 

From companies driven solely to maximize shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justifi ed through big pharma’s ‘value pricing’, we misidentify taking with making, and have lost sight of what value really means. 

This event is first come, first served, and will be chaired by Wouter den Haan, Co-director for the Centre for Macroeconomics and Professor of Economics at LSE.

Twitter hashtag for this event: #LSEMazzucato

Full details about the event are available on the LSE website.

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