Mariana Mazzucato at the opening press conference of the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) in March in Berlin.
Image: EPA
Marianna Mazzucato advocates for a strong state to meet great challenges. Not only Economics Minister Robert Habeck is guided by the economist’s ideas.
Öeconomists don’t have it easy with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). The group of economists who dared to calculate the impact of a gas embargo in a study got a smack. Adding up “any mathematical models” is “irresponsible,” Scholz rumbled on Anne Will on the talk show. The relationship between his Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) and the guild of economists is better. One – admittedly rather unusual – economist has particularly impressed him: the Italian-American Mariana Mazzucato.
In an interview with the women’s magazine “Myself”, even before Habeck took office as Economics Minister, he named Mazzucato as one of seven women who had changed his life. Habeck reported on his first meeting with the economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “I had previously studied her writings intensively and they are among the best. In direct conversations, the woman was a power, an authority, which she produced with laughter, questions and with a casual matter-of-factness.”