Predatory Value Extraction
2019
Summary
William Lazonick’s book-length case (co-authored with Jang-Sup Shin, Oxford University Press, 2019) against the ‘maximizing shareholder value’ ideology that took hold of U.S. corporate management from the 1980s onward. The book traces how the balance between value creation and value extraction shifted inside major corporations, as stock buybacks and dividend payouts grew to absorb the bulk of corporate profits, and argues this financialized ‘downsize-and-distribute’ pattern, first laid out in Lazonick’s 2014 Harvard Business Review article ‘Profits Without Prosperity,’ undermines long-term investment, employment stability, and productivity growth. Full title: Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored.
ISBN: 9780198846772