IEBM Handbook of Economics: (International Encyclopaedia of Business and Management)

by William Lazonick

Economics is about the allocation of resources to alternative uses to improve economic performance. Professional economists are by no means in agreement concerning the definition of superior economic performance. Is it measured in growth in living standards, more equitable distributions of income, or financial and employment stability, or a combination of growth, equity, and stability? And even if economists can agree on the measure of performance, they typically have profound disagreements about the organizations and institutions in the economy that should determine the allocation of resources. Is it markets, states, or enterprises that, by controlling the allocation of resources, can achieve superior economic outcomes? Particularly neglected in the conventional economic debates is the role of the business enterprise in allocating resources to innovative investment strategies that, when successful, can generate higher quality products at lower unit costs while increasing the returns to labor and capital. This neglect has created a gulf between the research of economists and the challenges of business and management that is, fortunately, in the process of being overcome. Taken as a whole, the entries included in the IEBM Handbook of Economics reflect the progress that has been made among economists, many of them working in business schools, in bridging this gulf. In taking on this challenge, the IEBM Handbook of Economics offers a comprehensive and authoritative analysis on the major economic issues of our day. It provides an important reference work and learning tool for students of business and management, economists among them. Comprehensive and global in scope and content, this Handbook has been written by leading international academics, with an explicit recognition of the centrality of business activity and its management to the operation and performance of a modern economy.

777 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

William Lazonick is a Canadian economist who studies innovation and competition in the global economy. His research seeks to understand how, on the basis of innovative enterprise, a national economy can achieve stable and equitable economic growth. Lazonick is the originator of "the theory of innovative enterprise", which, he argues, provides both an essential intellectual foundation for understanding economic performance and a fundamental critique of the neoclassical theory of the market economy. Much of his current work focuses on how the financialization of the U.S. industrial corporation, manifested in massive distributions of corporate cash to shareholders and the explosion of stock-based executive pay, results in employment instability and income inequity, while undermining the innovative capability of the U.S. economy. He also conducts cross-national comparative research on the social conditions that enable or proscribe innovative enterprise, focusing in particular on the economies of Britain, Japan, and China as well as the United States.