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

Mass Producing Covid-19 Vaccine

Article | Feb 9, 2021

Capacity, Scale, and Control

"Build Back Better" Needs an Agenda for Upward Mobility

Article | Jan 5, 2021

How the dream of a middle class existence collapsed, first for Blacks, then for more and more white American workers and what the Biden administration could do to retrieve the situation.

Employment Mobility and the Belated Emergence of the Black Middle Class

Paper Working Paper Series | | Jan 2021

“Build back” means restoring the government and business investments in the productive capabilities of the U.S. labor force that created a growing middle class in the three decades after World War II

The $5.3 Trillion Question Behind America’s COVID-19 Failure

Article | Jul 24, 2020

That’s the amount of buybacks U.S. corporations funneled to shareholders during the past decade—rather than invest in technologies for the common good. This article is being published jointly by INET and The American Prospect

Featuring this expert

Washington Post Features Bill Lazonick's Research

News Aug 16, 2018

The Washington Post cites William Lazonick’s INET paper on shareholder value

Vox Cites Bill Lazonick Research

News Aug 15, 2018

Vox cites William Lazonick’s INET paper on shareholder value

CNN: Democrats Plan Crackdown on Booming Stock Buybacks

News Mar 21, 2018

INET grantee William Lazonick explains why Sen. Tammy Baldwin is proposing to ban stock buybacks.

CNN: Are Stock Buybacks Deepening America's Inequality?

News Mar 5, 2018

One of Wall Street’s favorite tools could be deepening the growing chasm between America’s rich and poor, according to INET grantee William Lazonick.