Society wants the supply of public services like healthcare, education, security, and infrastructure to be flexible, innovative, and efficient. However, the barriers created by bureaucracies often stifle innovation. Amid the current wave of digital transformation, new innovations that can help governments fulfil their social contracts are increasingly emerging. While the role of the state in creating incentives and reducing transaction costs is clear, a nuanced understanding of contemporary social policy requires a firm grasp of the role of business.
The notion of the knowledge economy lies at the heart of contemporary economic growth narratives. Not only has it shifted attention from the industry-government dyad to the "Triple Helix" of university-industry-government interactions, but it has also increased the attention given to the latter, since the 1990s, as a reliable analytical framework for innovation policy and practice. While globalization has intensified technology diffusion globally, leading to increased productivity in emerging and less developed economies, the extent of income convergence predicted by theory has not been realized. This is due, partly, to changes in the patterns and processes of capital accumulation during the post-World War II economic boom, and the concomitant highly dynamic nature of the capitalist mode of production.
A major characterization of the neoclassical production function is a standard assumption of profit maximization by firms. Under this framework, changes in a firm's revenue are linked to changes in the costs of capital and labor, with implications for competition, efficiency, and transparency. The past few decades have heralded a decline in labor's share of income, due to the prevailing highly capital-intensive multinational system of production. In addition to the concentration of capital ownership, this mode of wealth creation generates varying returns to different categories of labor, with workers at the top of the income distribution reaping disproportionately large rewards over time.
The innovation discourse has transitioned from its purely scientific and technical focus to include digital opportunities and the evolution of new business models. Economic diversification is often associated with higher levels of productivity because structural transformation leads to factor reallocation within and between sectors. However, due to various institutional and structural economic constraints such as large informal sectors, limited access to technology, and poor infrastructure, this is far from the case in many countries in the Global South.
Based on original research, theoretical perspectives, best practices, and lessons from multiple jurisdictions, this book provides insight into how public-private partnerships (P3s) can help transform a wide range of policy initiatives by creating win-win outcomes in traditionally mutually exclusive competitive markets and public sector operations. From efficiency and redistribution to policy diffusion and innovation to transaction costs and corporate innovation in the new economy, the book sheds light on the efficacy of P3s as a useful tool in addressing important public policy challenges related to health innovation, traditional education under disruptive technologies, climate change and the energy transition, the extractives sector, infrastructure, digital trade facilitation, and many more.
This book examines what we know and do not know about the role of P3s in innovating policy; it focuses on a broad range of reforms capable of driving competitiveness and economic growth. All in the global context.
