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William Lazonick

William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts, is co-founder and president of the , a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is an Open Society Fellow and a Canadian Ա for Advanced Research Fellow.Over the past decade, the Ա 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 ? Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States (Upjohn Ա 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 “: 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

Financialization of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry

Article | Dec 2, 2019

Pharmaceutical drugs are often a matter of life or death. It should be a prime objective of government policy to rid the industry of financialization.

Don't “Buyback” Fair Labor Standards

Article | Feb 20, 2019

We need to ban stock buybacks, while building a movement for basic economic rights

​Apple’s “Capital Return Program”: Where Are the Patient Capitalists?

Article | Nov 13, 2018

Instead of rewarding the taxpayers and employees who actually create value for the tech giant, Apple is doling out massive stock buybacks

Stock Buybacks Hurt Workers and the Economy. We Should Ban Them.

Article | Feb 27, 2018

Workers, innovation, and productivity all suffer when corporations spend their new U.S. tax breaks on stock buybacks.

Featuring this expert

General Equilibrium Theory: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

Article | Aug 16, 2016

Does general equilibrium theory sufficiently enhance our understanding of the economic process to make the entire exercise worthwhile, if we consider that other forms of thinking may have been ‘crowded out’ as a result of its being the ‘dominant discourse’? What, in the end, have we really learned from it?

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?