Professor William Lazonick

William Lazonick is President of the Academic-Industry Research Network and Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

He has professorial affiliations with SOAS, University of London and Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris. 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 a B.Com. (Commerce and Finance) at the University of Toronto, M.Sc. (Economics) at London School of Economics, and Ph.D. (Economics) at Harvard University. He holds honorary doctorates from Uppsala University and the University of Ljubljana.

Lazonick’s research focuses on the social conditions of innovation, socioeconomic mobility, employment opportunity, income distribution, 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. His article, “Innovative Business Models and Varieties of Capitalism,” won the Henrietta Larson Award from Harvard Business School for best article in Business History Review in 2010 (he had previously won this prize in 1983). He received the HBR McKinsey Award for outstanding article in Harvard Business Review in 2014 for “Profits Without Prosperity: Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and Leave Most Americans Worse Off”.  The Institute for New Economic Thinking, Gatsby Foundation, European Commission, and Ford Foundation have funded his recent research on innovation, financialization, and development.

At SOAS Economics, William Lazonick is working with Dr Antonio Andreoni as co-Pi for the research programme "Governing Financialisation, Innovation and Productivity in UK Manufacturing" (GOFINPRO) funded by the Gatsby Foundation.

His recent paper can be seen on the Institute for New Economic Thinking Web Pages.