Lazonick explains the origins of the new era of employment insecurity and income inequality, and considers what governments, businesses, and individuals can do about it. He also asks whether the United States can refashion its high-tech business model to generate stable and equitable economic...

A basic intellectual challenge for those concerned with the poverty of nations is to come to grips with the nature and causes of the wealth of the world's wealthier nations. One might then be in a position to inform the poorer nations how they might achieve similar outcomes. This paper is...

We employ the “social conditions of innovative enterprise” framework to analyze the key determinants of China’s development path from the economic reforms of 1978 to the present. First, we focus on how government investments in human capabilities and physical infrastructure provided...

“Sustainable prosperity” denotes an economy that generates stable and equitable growth for a large and growing middle class. From the 1940s into the 1970s, the United States appeared to be on a trajectory of sustainable prosperity, especially for white-male members of the U.S. labor force....

There is widespread and growing concern about the availability of good jobs in the U.S. economy. Inequality has been growing for thirty years and is now at levels not seen since the 1920s. Stable and remunerative employment has become harder for U.S. workers to find. With the widespread plant...

As the Covid-19 pandemic takes its disproportionate toll on African Americans, the historical perspective in this working paper provides insight into the socioeconomic conditions under which President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promise to “build back better” might actually begin to deliver...

A basic intellectual challenge for those concerned with the poverty of nations is to come to grips with the nature and causes of the wealth of the world's wealthier nations. One might then be in a position to inform the poorer nations how they might achieve similar outcomes. This paper is...

In the decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African Americans made historic gains in accessing employment opportunities in racially integrated workplaces in U.S. business firms and government agencies. In the previous working papers in this series, we have shown that in the 1960s and...