What institutions and policies are needed to sustain UK economic growth in the dynamic world economy of the twenty-first century? After years of inadequate investment in skills, infrastructure and innovation, there are longstanding structural weaknesses in the economy, all rooted in a failure to achieve stable planning, strategic vision and a political consensus on the right policy framework to support growth. This must change if we are to meet our current challenges and more that may arise in the future. Despite the current recession gloom, the UK has many assets that can be mobilised to its advantage. It has strong rule of law, generally competitive product markets, flexible labour markets and a world-class university system. It has strengths in many key sectors, with cutting-edge firms in both manufacturing and services. These and other assets helped to reverse the UK's relative economic decline over the century before 1980. This book, based on the work of the LSE Growth Commission, argues that the UK should build on these strengths and proposes how we can address the inadequate institutional structures that have deterred long term investment to support our future prosperity.

A stellar cast of economists examines the roles of creative destruction in addressing today’s most important political and social questions. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant while rents accumulate, the environment is suffering, and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed every crack in the systems of global capitalism. How can we restart growth? Can our societies be made fairer? Editors Ufuk Akcigit and John Van Reenen assemble a world-leading group of social scientists and theorists to consider these questions and, in particular, how ideas about the economics of creative destruction may help solve the problems we face. Most closely associated with Joseph Schumpeter, formalized by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt in the 1990s, the idea of innovation as creative destruction has become foundational in economics, reaching into almost every corner of the discipline—both theoretically and empirically. Now, at a time of rapid and disorienting change, is an opportune moment to pull the disparate strands of research together to assess what has been learned and continue an intellectual project that can aid economic decision-making in the decades to come. The cutting-edge work in The Economics of Creative Destruction focuses on innovation and growth. Contributors offer illuminating insights into monopoly and inequality, the nature of the social safety net, climate change, and the ups and downs of regulation. Collectively, they suggest that governance has a role to play in capitalism, maximizing its benefits and minimizing its risks.