Smita Srinivas

Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States

Market Menagerie examines technological advance and market regulation in the health industries of nations such as India, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, and Japan. Pharmaceutical and life science industries can reinforce economic development and industry growth, but not necessarily positive health outcomes. Yet well-crafted industrial and health policies can strengthen each other and reconcile economic and social goals. This book advocates moving beyond traditional market failure to bring together three uncommonly paired themes: the growth of industrial capabilities, the politics of health access, and the geography of production and redistribution.

Varieties of Innovation and Welfare Regimes: The Leap from R&D Projects to the Development of City-regions

In the varieties of capitalism, welfare capitalism, and systems of innovation literatures, the university is a critical actor as public employer, trainer and provider of several public goods. However, there is relatively weak enquiry into the spatial and institutional characteristics of university-led economic development and a relative neglect of the political economy and organizational features of embedded R&D projects in urban and regional planning. We argue that technical projects, far from being stand-alone entities, have taken on the broad characteristics of the university and city-regional development mandate in where they reside. The article is based on an exploratory study of university–industry R&D projects in six city regions of Finland. We show that: (a) the shifting role of universities reflects a changed context for the welfare state in which the “public” debate occurs; (b) These create distinct issues of legitimacy and coalition-building in local economic planning which give rise to diverse regional interpretations of single technology programmes; (c) We categorise three general types of models of R&D projects in universities and propose tentative categories of contributions to “public knowledge”. This diversity of interpretations and outcomes leaves us optimistic regarding the ability of city-regions to adapt and plan for the future against a changing welfare state that shapes the universitys role, yet more cautious about any clear-cut “public knowledge” emerging from such technical projects.