William Lazonick is a Canadian economist focused on innovation and competition within the global economy. His research aims to uncover how national economies can achieve stable and equitable growth through innovative enterprise. He originated the theory of innovative enterprise, which he posits offers both a crucial intellectual framework for understanding economic performance and a fundamental critique of neoclassical market theory. Lazonick's current work investigates how the financialization of U.S. industrial corporations—evidenced by substantial shareholder payouts and soaring executive compensation—contributes to employment instability, income inequality, and the erosion of the nation's innovative capacity. His comparative research also explores the societal conditions fostering or hindering innovative enterprise across economies like Britain, Japan, China, and the United States.
The book explores the transition of industrial leadership from Britain to the United States and subsequently to Japan, highlighting the evolution of business investment strategies and organizational structures that facilitated these shifts. It delves into the factors that influenced these changes, offering insights into how different nations adapted to emerging economic landscapes throughout the century.
This book explains how an ideology of corporate resource allocation known as 'maximizing shareholder value' (MSV) that emerged in the 1980s undermined the social foundations of sustainable prosperity in the United States, resulting in rising inequality and slow productivity growth, and sets out an agenda for restoring sustainable prosperity.
This Element explains how corporate financialization, manifested by predatory value extraction in the name of 'maximizing shareholder value', undermines investment in innovation in the United States. It outlines a policy framework that confronts predatory value extraction and puts in place social institutions that support sustainable prosperity.