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

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

How “Maximizing Shareholder Value” Minimized the Strategic National Stockpile: The $5.3 Trillion Question for Pandemic Preparedness Raised by the Ventilator Fiasco

Paper Working Paper | | Jul 2020

The success of projects for pandemic preparedness and response depends on the strength of government-business collaborations.

There Can Be No Equality Without a Dramatic Renewal of Employment Opportunity for All American Workers

Article | Jul 16, 2020

To fulfill MLK’s vision of jobs and freedom for Black Americans, Washington must rein in corporate greed

How the Disappearance of Unionized Jobs Obliterated an Emergent Black Middle Class

Article | Jun 15, 2020

Since the 1980s, the enemy of equal employment opportunity through upward socioeconomic mobility has been the pervasive and entrenched corporate-governance ideology and practice of maximizing shareholder value.

Featuring this expert

Reawakening

From the Origins of Economic Ideas to the Challenges of Our Time

Event Plenary | Oct 21–23, 2017

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

“Worse Than Big Tobacco”: How Big Pharma Fuels the Opioid Epidemic

Article | Oct 10, 2017

Once again, an out-of-control industry is threatening public health on a mammoth scale

How Economists Turned Corporations into Predators

Article | Oct 5, 2017

The Idea That Businesses Exist Solely to Enrich Shareholders Is Harmful Nonsense

The Rise and Fall of the American Middle Class

Video | Apr 19, 2017

How rationalization, marketization, and globalization characterize the U.S. economy during the past 50 years, and how the behavior of companies and fate of American workers have changed during this process.