Los riesgos de la mission-oriented innovation

Diane Coyle está preocupada (y creo que tiene mucha razón) por algo que ya se empieza a ver en algunos entornos: la captura de las políticas "mission-oriented"  por parte de los lobbies. Y es que, como siempre cuento en clase, y nos advertía Alfred Kahn (la cita de entrada del Libro Blanco de Ignacio):

The central institutional issue of public utility regulation remains finding the best possible mix of inevitably imperfect regulation and inevitably imperfect competition.

Es decir: siempre hay que asegurarse de que el fallo del regulador (en este caso, su captura por los lobbies) no es mayor que el fallo del mercado que trata de arreglar.

Según Coyle:

The experience of the 1980s should also make those interested in science policy and industrial policy now reflect a bit before concluding that back to the pre-1987 future* is the right way forward. ‘Should the government mainly fund basic science or near-market research?’ is the wrong question. Governments of course should fund basic science, which is a classic market failure. But the policy challenge isn’t about money so much as co-ordination and facilitation – ensuring industry standards emerge fast enough and at the right level to grow new markets, enforcing competition law, using government procurement to give investors confidence there will be demand for innovations in areas such as health care or education, making sure the financial tax and regulatory system provides incentives to invest in growing tech businesses, and so on.