William Lazonick is Professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at University of Massachusetts Lowell and Director of the UMass Lowell Center for Industrial Competitiveness. He is also affiliated with the CNRS Groupe de Recherche en Économie Théorique et Appliquée of Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV. Previously, he was Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1975-1984) and Professor of Economics at Barnard College of Columbia University (1985-1993), and Distinguished Research Professor, INSEAD (1996-2007).  He has also been on the faculties of the University of Tokyo (1996-1997), Harvard Business School (1984-1986), and University of Toronto (1982-1983), and was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1989-1990). Numerous governmental agencies and private foundations in Europe, the United States, and Japan have funded his research. In August 2009, his book, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy?: Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States, will be available from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

In 1991 Professor Lazonick was the first economist to serve as president of the Business History Conference, the main professional association of business historians in the United States. His work through the early 1990s was the subject of a chapter in the volume, American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century (Elgar, 1996).  He was the youngest of 36 economists selected worldwide to write an autobiographical essay in Exemplary Economists (Elgar 2000). He is the author or editor of twelve books, including Competitive Advantage of the Shop Floor (Harvard University Press, 1990) and Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and some 100 academic articles. In recent years, much of his work has been translated into Chinese, among a number of other foreign languages. With funding from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, he is currently completing a book, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy?: Business Organization and High-tech Employment in the United States.  He is regularly invited to speak at academic conferences, research institutes, universities, government agencies, and corporate associations throughout the world. 

Professor Lazonick holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto (1968), a Master of Science degree in economics from the London School of Economics (1969), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics from Harvard University (1975). In 1991 Uppsala University awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work on the theory and history of economic development.