Lara Merling

In the UK, there's apparently no money to fix crumbling public services, build housing or invest in climate action. But somehow there's money to double the military budget to project force around the world, even when it does little to make anyone safer.

Important new research from @cashmank_ and @KhemRogaly on where UK military spending actually goes.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/o…

Mexico has become a manufacturing and export powerhouse. But as exports have surged, productivity growth has stagnated and the gains have remained concentrated in a few firms and regions.

Can Plan México change that? Its ambition is to deliver shared prosperity by raising investment while building domestic capabilities, upgrading production, building care infrastructure, and creating decent work.

My new @IIPP_UCL report with @MazzucatoM looks at what delivering that ambition requires: a macroeconomic framework that supports productive investment rather than squeezing it, policy tools such as procurement and development-bank finance directed at these goals, and a state architecture able to coordinate across ministries and institutions.

ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publi…

Looking forward to presenting our new @IIPP_UCL paper with @MazzucatoM, at the 2026 @FinanceInCommon GRN Conference.

The World Bank’s industrial policy turn is welcome. But moving from ambition to delivery requires shifting the economic foundations of its operations. Our paper maps how.

Read our paper: ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publi…

Conference and live stream details: grn-2026.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/…

🚨 New paper with @MazzucatoM: A Mission-Aligned World Bank — From Ambition to Delivery.

The World Bank's adoption of the language of missions through initiatives like Mission 300, alongside its renewed openness to industrial policy, signals a genuine shift in how it thinks about the role of governments in development. We ask a simple question: how does the Bank's underlying economic model need to evolve to deliver on that ambition?

Missions provide direction. Industrial strategy provides the means. But both depend on economic foundations that go beyond fixing market failures and filling financial gaps — shaping markets, directing investment, treating the state as a strategic investor, and strengthening state capacity and capabilities.

The opportunity is real. Our paper shows what it would take to build on it.

Link 👇

Proud to have shaped this @UNCTAD report - a roadmap for fixing the global financial architecture so countries can actually finance climate-resilient development.

Climate goals cannot be met with the same economic model that created today’s constraints.

unctad.org/publication/al…