Mariana Mazzucato: How the Economy Can “Build Back Better”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Those statistics are really horrendous and you’ve seen all these rolling new instructions from various governments, certainly around Europe, of lockdowns and curfews and tiers. And it’s causing a lot of backlash on the ground. What do you — how do you assess the situation right now?

MARIANA MAZZUCATO, PROFESSOR IN THE ECONOMICS OF INNOVATION, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LONDON: So, I’m not a medic. So, I just talk about the economic, you know, situation. And I think, you know, unfortunately, with the lockdown, if it happens, it happens. But the real question is how do we structure it? You know, there is different way to structure about the recovery funds that are going to be needed, even more now with lots of businesses probably again having to close, if we think of the hospitality sector. But the question is, can we, even in the structure of those recovery funds, or also how workers are going to, you know, probably need, again, for a longer period to have a furlough scheme, how can we actually structure that so it really does “build back better?” And I think there, we need to really study what’s happened in the last six months. There’s been, you know, real heterogeneity differences in how governments have responded. And those that have also turned this crisis into an opportunity, and I know that sometimes sounds strange, but an opportunity for really turning their economy into a stronger one, a more resilient one, we need to learn those lessons. And it’s really interesting how some of these countries were developing countries. So, both Vietnam and for example, Kerala in the state — sorry, in India, both have been investing over the last decade or so inside their public sector. They haven’t been doing, for example, what’s happened here in the U.K. where I’m standing, sitting, which is kind of outsource that public sector capacity, including the testing that’s being outsourced right now to the consulting companies. So, when you strengthen your public system, you can govern a crisis better. And so, there’s lots of lessons like that, including also coming back to the recovery scheme issue. In France, Macron was very clear. He said, you know, yes, we will help business, but we won’t do it just as a handout. We have to build back better. So, he put really strong conditions on the car company, Renault, and Air France to actually lower their carbon emissions. And that shouldn’t be seen as a penalty. It’s really an incentive to innovate and to invest in this very difficult period so that later, once we have a proper recovery, we have actually a more sustainable economy.