Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Shareholder Value (with William Lazonick and Lenore Palladino)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick HanauerTuesday, June 30, 2026

Show Notes

This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value.

For decades, Americans were sold the idea that if corporations focused on boosting stock prices and rewarding shareholders, prosperity would trickle down to workers, consumers, and communities. Instead, shareholder primacy helped justify stock buybacks, wage suppression, layoffs, and underinvestment — extracting wealth from the real economy and funneling it upward.

In this episode, Nick and Goldy talk with William Lazonick and Lenore Palladino about how shareholder value became one of the core myths of trickle-down economics, why it has caused so much damage, and what it would mean to build corporations around workers, consumers, communities, and long-term prosperity instead.

This episode originally aired on February 19, 2019.

Lenore Palladino is associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and author of Good Company: Economic Policy After Shareholder Primacy.

William Lazonick is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network.

Social Media:

@lenorepalladino.bsky.social

@Lazonick

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