Issue Underinvestment where value is long-term, diffuse or hard to monetise

Summary

EY's chief economist credits capitalism with mobilising investment, spurring innovation and driving efficiency, as competition and price signals push firms to cut costs and put resources to productive use. He identifies a specific weak spot, however. When value is long-term, spread across many beneficiaries or hard to turn into revenue, the same mechanisms tend to underinvest. The areas that suffer include resilience, sustainability, human capital and social infrastructure. EY frames this not as a failure of capitalism itself but as a product of current incentive structures, noting that firms solving real problems profitably remain exceptions and asking how incentives could change to allocate capital differently.