The entrepreneurial state : debunking public vs. private sector myths /

From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and current Tea Party activists, the argument has been made that the proper role of government is to stay out of the way of the private sector. At most, the government should engage in market repair, the fixing of "market failures" such as those involving externalities or concentration of market power. In The Entrepreneurial State, Mazzucato (Univ of Sussex, UK) sets out to establish that such a limited view of government is at best flawed, and may even be dangerous. She views the state as a dynamic, risk-taking leader, taking on the most risky investments and breaking the path for the private sector to follow. Were it not for the state, there would be no "man on the moon," no green revolution, no Internet, and even no iPads. She concludes by asking why the tax-paying public, the ultimate financiers of this innovation, failed to appropriate any returns that the private sector reaped. Why was the risk public but the return private? She makes an engaging, persuasive case in favor of the state, and suggests one respect it not just as an instrument of market repair but also as a prerequisite for future prosperity. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional audiences. J. Bhattacharya Iowa State University