Analyzing the Effectiveness of State-Guided Innovation

Rodney H. Yerger ()
Additional contact information
Rodney H. Yerger: George Mason University

A chapter in Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy, 2024, pp 95-108 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract A crucial debate exists over the effectiveness of government-guided innovation efforts, which recently through economist Mariana Mazzucato’s arguments for an entrepreneurial state that encourages the public sector’s active role in technological change and value creation, is considerably shaping global policy. This essay addresses a key assertion by Mazzucato that the government is the boldest innovator accountable for the greatest value in society. Through use case analysis, I argue that Mazzucato’s claims of the state providing mission-oriented directionality that drives technology development do not survive the scrutiny of the Supply-Chain Fallacy, the belief that every item in a line of production or chain of events is necessary and causal. I do find occasions of public sector innovation success in the development of military technologies, particularly during times of war, which can have beneficial spillover effects. However, I show that the potentiality of such successes in a persistent peacetime environment is limited by the viability of the public sector entrepreneur.

Keywords: Public goods; Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Political economy; H41; L26; O31; P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:inschp:978-3-031-49196-2_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031491962

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-49196-2_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Studies in Entrepreneurship from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().