“With uncertainty around the world about how and when the coronavirus outbreak will decelerate, whole business sectors have been affected by lockdowns and are facing ruin. In Germany, more than 750,000 companies have put over 12 million employees on reduced working hours…
AIR ANALYSIS
Comments on economic issues and developments published by AIR researchers and affiliates
Think Big Pharma Won’t Profiteer in the Race to Treat Coronavirus? Think Again.
“In a 2019 Gallup poll, Big Pharma ranked as the most disliked industry in America. Rosie Collington, a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen and a researcher at the Academic-Industry Research Network, knows why: She has studied how major insulin manufacturing…
With working Americans’ survival at stake, the US is bailing out the richest
“Amid a humanitarian crisis compounded by mass layoffs and collapsing economic activity, the last course our legislators should be following is the one they appear to be on right now: bailing out shareholders and executives who, while enriching themselves, spent…
CEOs Gorged on Buybacks for Years. Now They Want Bailouts.
“Congress is poised to impose restrictions on stock buybacks as a part of the multi-trillion-dollar recovery package that is being voted on this week. To understand why those limits are necessary, look no further than the airline industry, which is being singled…
Top Economist: Instead of Basic Income, Let’s Keep People Working Productively During the Crisis
“As the pandemic rages, everyone is scrambling to figure out how to protect people getting economically pummeled. Americans may soon get a cash injection to help them fight the economic devastation of Covid-19 as part of a stimulus bill agreed…
4 Ways to Eradicate the Corporate Disease That is Worsening the Covid-19 Pandemic
“It’s time for business executives, employees, and taxpayers to come together to help get us out of the pandemic and create conditions for a sustainable and equitable future Here are the key ways to respond to the coronavirus crisis and…
Business resiliency means banning stock buybacks
“As millions face unemployment and dire financial prospects amid the coronavirus pandemic, hotels, airlines, and other large corporations are repeating the script of 2008: asking for massive public bailouts after years of extractive shareholder payments. Before the government buoys these…
Denmark is helping those who can’t work due to coronavirus – why isn’t the UK?
“At just after 5pm on Monday, my phone rang. I missed the call – I was in one of Copenhagen’s supermarkets, buying groceries and toilet paper and soap and things I still do not need to think twice about getting…
Shareholders Benefit, Don’t Add Value To Companies (Interview with William Lazonick)
“William Lazonick, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, talks about his most recent book Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored”, which keys on…
Is the Most Unproductive Firm the Foundation of the Most Efficient Economy?
“Edith Penrose’s 1959 book, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (TGF), fits the definition of a “classic”: a work that many cite but few have read. The view that I advance in this essay is that no one should…