Public Purpose

How governments can spur growth and innovation to solve their greatest challenges—from green energy to national security to building resilient health systems. Known around the world for challenging mainstream economics, economist Mariana Mazzucato believes that “the public sector can and should be a co-creator of wealth that actively steers growth to meet its goals” (The Financial Times). In The Mission-Driven Economy, she calls on governments to create the economies we need today. Mazzucato’s challenge leads off a debate on the revival of Industrial policy—roughly defined as deliberate government action to re(shape) the economy. Industrial policy has fallen out of favor in recent decades as economists defer to free markets to produce innovation and growth. Yet today thinkers across the political spectrum have begun expressing new interest in industrial policy as a way to address the most serious problems of our times: from national security and climate change, to the market’s underfunding of public goods, to sluggish economic growth and labor market dysfunction. Together, contributors make a compelling case for industrial policy—what it is, and why we need it now. Addressing investment, innovation, supply chains, and growth, they offer a robust vision of a renewed industrial policy, and what it can offer the US economy in the face of climate change and a global pandemic.

Criticism of the present economic system of the USA and proposals for comprehensive economic policy reform - covers the general economic theory of advanced economic development, consumption, and the concept of the household, the market system in relation to the service sector and the self employed, economic planning, price policy, inflation, income distribution, fiscal policy, the environment, technological change, the role of women, etc.

Comparative information detailing the cultural, legal and historical environments of foundations in international settings has been scarce - until now. Written by scholars from six countries, this text covers philanthropic foundations in the world's busiest commercial centers - the U.S. and Eastern and Western Europe. It reports on the structures and mindsets that shape foundations' gift giving, and discusses different aspects of foundation management. Case studies of the French and Italian foundation communities and a comparative legal chapter are especially notable.

This book takes a fresh look at the connection between history and policy, proposing that historians rediscover a sense of ‘public purpose’ that can embrace political decision-making – and also enhance historical practice. Making policy is a complex and messy affair, calling on many different forms of expertise and historians have often been reluctant to get involved in policy advice, with those interested in ‘history in public’ tending to work with museums, heritage sites, broadcasters and community organisations. Green notes, however, that historians have also insisted that ‘history matters’ in public policy debate, and been critical of politicians’ distortions or neglect of the past. She argues that it is not possible to have it both ways.

This text explores how the public purpose doctrine reconciles the conflicting obligations that states have to engage in regulatory sovereignty while honoring host-state obligations to protect foreign investment. It examines the multiple permutations and iterations of the doctrine and the inherent fundamental flaws that lead to disparities in the relationship between investors and states.

From 1951 to 1971, Tom Kent was successively Assistant Editor of The Economist; Editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, confidant, adviser, and speechwriter to Opposition Leader Lester B. Pearson; leading light at the Kingston conference of 1960; policy consultant to the Liberal Party of Canada; candidate for Parliament against Tommy Douglas; "Co-ordinator of Progamming" (i.e., right-hand-man) in Pearson's PMO; Deputy Minister under Jean Marchand at Employment and Immigration; and first Deputy Minister, also under Marchand, at the new Department of Regional Economic Expansion. A Public Purpose is an account of Kent's experience as a central figure in the life of one of the most important governments of the last half century, and an agenda for unfinished business, suggesting policies for the present. His views on the events in which he was involved are strong and often unorthodox, but always consistent in their theme that politics should be conducted neither technocratically nor according to imperatives imposed by interest groups and the pork barrel. Instead, he argues, political parties should tell the people what they intend to do when they get into office and, once elected, should do it.

This document contain papers on the following topics: setting the stage for government and universities in Canada; experience in other countries; pressures and responses of universities in Canada; university governance and management; the perspective of four presidents on how universities in Canada view the opportunities and problems of a changing environment; and perspectives from outside the university.

This text discusses the continuing relevance of one of the most prominent economists of the twentieth century. The contributors explore the continuing relevance of Galbraith's arguments to current controversies and problems.