Book Review: Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier WeinzierlMRosseauB. Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier. Harvard Business Review Press, 2025, p. 320, $32.00. ISBN: 978-1-647827168.

Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier" by Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau offers a rigorous and accessible economic analysis of the burgeoning space sector.The book takes readers beyond traditional technical and strategic perspectives.Aiming to equip readers with an informed, sophisticated perspective on space and its development, the book provides a systematic framework for understanding the transformation of space activities from government-led initiatives to increasingly market-driven enterprises.More than just an analysis, the authors provide a call to action to use the power of distributed knowledge and specialized expertise to create new uses for space throughout our economies.Emphasizing that the ongoing revolution is not about complete privatization, but rather decentralization, where both sectors play to their strengths, the authors present a nuanced argument for integrating public and private actors.Space, they argue, is becoming an "ever-more-important site of value creation for businesses" (p. 1).This perspective is encapsulated in their three-step economic framework: first, establish the market through decentralization; second, refine the market through addressing market failures (such as environmental challenges like space debris and market power concentration); and third, temper the market through alignment with social objectives (including fundamental governance questions like property rights in space and national security considerations).The book's intellectual rigor is anchored in established economic principles, particularly the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics (1FTWE), which posits that "under certain conditions, the equilibrium of a competitive market is efficient" (p.4) and serves as the starting point for policy design, acknowledging that government intervention is necessary when these "certain conditions" do not hold.Weinzierl and Rosseau excel at applying core microeconomic theory to a frontier industry.Consequently, this book is particularly valuable for economics students and instructors.Demonstrating how the 1FTWE provides both a normative benchmark and a diagnostic tool for identifying when markets require intervention, the authors' treatment of welfare economics is exceptional.Their framework offers a masterclass in applied microeconomics, which seamlessly integrates concepts of market failures, externalities, public goods, natural monopolies, and coordination problems within a single, coherent policy analysis.