William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts, is co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is an Open Society Fellow and a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Fellow.Over the past decade, the Institute for New Economic Thinking has funded a number of his research projects.

He has professorial affiliations with SOAS University of London and Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris. Previously, Lazonick was assistant and associate professor of economics at Harvard University, professor of economics at Barnard College of Columbia University, and distinguished research professor at INSEAD in France. Lazonick earned his B.Com. at the University of Toronto, M.Sc. in Economics at London School of Economics, and Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University. He holds honorary doctorates from Uppsala University and the University of Ljubljana.

His research focuses on the social conditions of innovation and economic development in advanced and emerging economies. His book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States (Upjohn Institute 2009) won the 2010 Schumpeter Prize. He has twice—in 1983 and 2010—had the award from Harvard Business School for best article of the year in Business History Review. In 2014, he received the HBR McKinsey Award for outstanding article in Harvard Business Review for “Profits Without Prosperity: Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and Leave Most Americans Worse Off.” In January 2020, Oxford University Press published his book, co-authored with Jang-Sup Shin, Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored.

By this expert

Innovative Enterprise Solves the Agency Problem

Paper Working paper | | Oct 2017

The Theory of the Firm, Financial Flows, and Economic Performance

How “Shareholder Value” is Killing Innovation

Article | Jul 31, 2017

The prevailing stock market ideology enriches value extractors, not value creators

US Pharma’s Financialized Business Model

Paper Working Paper Series | | Jul 2017

Price gouging in the US pharmaceutical drug industry goes back more than three decades.

The Functions of the Stock Market and the Fallacies of Shareholder Value

Paper Working Paper Series | | Jun 2017

Conventional wisdom has it that the primary function of the stock market is to raise cash for companies for the purpose of investing in productive capabilities. The conventional wisdom is wrong.

Featuring this expert

How MBA Programs Drive Inequality

Article | Jul 7, 2016

Business school students are taught to extract resources instead of creating value.

How Superstar Companies Like Apple Are Killing America’s High-Tech Future

Article | Dec 8, 2014

Few would argue that America’s fortunes rise and fall on its ability to generate technological innovations — to put bold ideas to work and then bring them to market.

How Government Helps, and Wall Street Hurts, the Innovative Enterprise

Video | Aug 21, 2011

Innovation drives economic growth and welfare, and the industrial corporation drives innovation, says William Lazonick. But just how do corporations innovate?