Project Syndicate

Met today with @MetroMayorSteve to discuss missions for the Liverpool City Region. Devolution is not just about moving power from the centre, it's about building the places with connective tissue so that what Liverpool learns strengthens other places too. Last week's fiscal devolution roadmap gives mayors a share of the taxes raised in their regions. That is a chance to put place first, but devolved money still needs direction: missions that create good local jobs, so growth is felt in places, not just in aggregate figures. @ProSyn on devolution ➡️ project-syndicate.org/commen…

Public control is the capacity of the state to steer economic activity toward strategic objectives through the public-purpose orientation of its policy tools. Ownership is one tool among many. With @AnnaHopeEmerson in @ProSyn, four things progressive governments need to do differently. Read more ➡️ project-syndicate.org/commen…

What matters is not how much the state owns, but what it makes possible. The purpose the tools serve, the conditions attached to public support, and how success is measured. New in @ProSyn with @AnnaHopeEmerson on why “public control” could be a playbook for progressive governments, but only if it is rigorously defined. Read more ➡️ project-syndicate.org/commen… More on the project ➡️ ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/research-…

Policymakers gather in Bangkok with oil near $100 a barrel, the second energy shock in four years, and 3.4 billion people living in countries that spend more on interest than on health or education. The advice governments receive has not changed. Protect the headline deficit, cut investment first, wait for rates to fall. New for @ProSyn, published alongside the first policy brief on fiscal rules from the Global Council on New Economics for the 21st Century, which I co-chair with Deputy Prime Minister of Spain @carlos_cuerpo. Op-ed ➡️ project-syndicate.org/commen… Policy brief ➡️ neweconomicscouncil.org/

Progressives need a new economic playbook. The grand challenges of our time, from climate to AI to the rise of populism, will not be met by an economics that only knows how to fix markets once they have already failed. Speaking on the productivity puzzle this afternoon at Reinventing Europe, produced by @ProSyn with @AXA in Paris, alongside @Ph_Aghion, @thomasbuberl and @Domanski_Andrz. I will be discussing why Vice President of Spain @Carlos_Cuerpo and I are launching the Global Council on New Economics for the 21st Century to Bangkok next week, at the @IMFNews and @WorldBankGroup Annual Meetings, focused on exactly that question.