William Lazonick, professor of economics emeritus 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. 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 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. His article, “Is the Most Unproductive Firm the Foundation of the Most Efficient Economy? Penrosian Learning and the Neoclassical Fallacy”, appeared in the International Review of Applied Economics, 36, 2: 2022: 1-32. His perspective on restoring stable and equitable growth to the US economy can be found in his 2023 book, Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the US Corporation
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009410700
Lazonick’s recent research can be found on the websites of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Academic-Industry Research Network, and Harvard Business Review. Professor Lazonick’s work has been widely covered in the news media, and his opinion pieces and popular articles have been published in American Prospect, Atlantic, Barron’s, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, Huffington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, Le Monde, MarketWatch, Naked Capitalism, New York Times, Salon.com, and Washington Post.
