145 Results for “William Lazonick”
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesIs the Most Unproductive Firm the Foundation of the Most Efficient Economy? Penrosian Learning Confronts the Neoclassical Fallacy
Jan 2020
To get beyond the neoclassical fallacy, economists have to stop relying on constrained-optimization methodology
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesChina’s Development Path: Government, Business, and Globalization in an Innovating Economy
Aug 2022
China’s successful technological development path stands in contrast to the corporate financialization model in the United States
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesInnovative Enterprise or Sweatshop Economics? In Search of Foundations of Economic Analysis
Oct 2015
By integrating the history of industrial development in Britain and the United States with the ideas of leading economic thinkers, this essay demonstrates the absurdity of perfect competition as the ideal of economic efficiency.
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Article
A Public Comment on the SEC Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule
Mar 29, 2017
In this comment, we explain our objections to the SEC’s current formulation of the Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule on each of three grounds: the erroneous estimation of CEO pay; the unclear specification of the “median” worker; and the risk of normalizing a pay ratio that is far too high. Then we present the latest data on the remuneration of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in the United States, demonstrating the way in which the SEC’s measure of CEO pay that enters into the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio tends to systematically underestimate actual executive pay.
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Working Paper
Working PaperHow “Maximizing Shareholder Value” Minimized the Strategic National Stockpile: The $5.3 Trillion Question for Pandemic Preparedness Raised by the Ventilator Fiasco
Jul 2020
The success of projects for pandemic preparedness and response depends on the strength of government-business collaborations.
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesLabor in the Twenty-First Century: The Top 0.1% and the Disappearing Middle-Class
Jan 2015
The ongoing explosion of the incomes of the richest households and the erosion of middle-class employment opportunities for most of the rest have become integrally related in the now-normal operation of the U.S. economy.
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Article
Yellen Challenges Economists Amid Elusive Great Recovery
Oct 24, 2016
Like the Great Depression and the stagflation of the ’70s, the anemic growth of the U.S. economy can’t be understood or remedied without changes in economists’ thinking
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Working Paper
Working Paper SeriesThe Value-Extracting CEO: How Executive Stock-Based Pay Undermines Investment in Productive Capabilities
Dec 2016
The business corporation is the central economic institution in a modern economy. A company’s senior executives, with the advice and support of the board of directors, are responsible for the allocation of corporate resources to investments in productive capabilities. Senior executives also advise the board on the extent to which, given the need to invest in productive capabilities, the company can afford to make cash distributions to shareholders. Motivating corporate resource-allocation decisions are the modes of remuneration that incentivize and reward the top executives of these companies. A sound analysis of the operation and performance of a modern economy requires an understanding of not only how much these executives are paid but also the ways in which the prevailing system of executive pay influences their decisions to allocate corporate resources.
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Podcasts
The Rise and Fall of the Black Blue-Collar Middle Class, part 2
Jul 2, 2021
Umass Lowell Economics professor William Lazonick, outlines the history of how government policy and economic conditions contributed to the rise and fall of a Black blue-collar middle class. Part 2 takes a closer look at the role of finance and stock buybacks and what can be done to reverse the trend towards growing inequality.
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Working Paper
Working PaperInvesting in Innovation: A Policy Framework for Attaining Sustainable Prosperity in the United States
Apr 2022
Business firms are not alone in making investments in the productive capabilities required to generate innovative goods and services. Household units and government agencies also make investments in productive capabilities upon which business firms rely for their own investment activities.
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Working Paper
Working PaperThe Pursuit of Shareholder Value: Cisco’s Transformation from Innovation to Financialization
Feb 2023
On the dereliction of key US-based business corporations to take the lead in making the investments in organizational learning required to generate cutting-edge communication-infrastructure products.
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Article
Top Economist: Instead of Basic Income, Let’s Keep People Working Productively During the Crisis
Mar 25, 2020
William Lazonick emphasizes that keeping workers productively employed is key to economic recovery from Covid-19 as well as a healthy economic future
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Site Pages
Resources for the Media
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Article
U.S. Corporations Don’t Need Tax Breaks on Foreign Profits
Dec 21, 2015
Many Americans have expressed outrage over Pfizer’s plan, through its merger with Allergan, to move its tax home from the United States to Ireland. Now, in a New York Times op-ed, Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider turned hedge fund activist, has joined the chorus. He labels the Pfizer-Allergan deal a “travesty,” blaming the U.S.’s “uncompetitive international tax system.”
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Article
We Stopped Pfizer’s Tax Dodge, Now Let’s End the Buybacks
Apr 8, 2016
Industrial journalist Ken Jacobson and economist William Lazonick (both of the Academic-Industry Research Network), call for an end to stock market manipulation through buybacks.