Lawrence King

I am a Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Previously, I was Professor of Sociology and Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, and an Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale. I remain a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School.

My brand of political economy stems from the continental and institutionalist traditions, especially the classical work of Weber, Polanyi, Veblen and C.Wright Mills. Rather than seeking universal laws of political and economic phenomena, this tradition seeks knowledge of the universe of historical and comparative cases in order to generate causal accounts that are bound by historical contexts.

I utilize multiple methods in a question-driven research process. These include traditional comparative-historical methods, in-depth interviews, surveys, cross-national and time-series quantitative methods, industrial organization techniques (market-structure research), and power-structure research (utilizing network and content analysis).

Most of my career I have published on the interaction of economic and political forces, as well as the collective actors and organizations (like classes, status groups, corporations and policy networks) that shape the economic and political terrain.

Part my published work in comparative political economy to date has been on the socio-economics of the transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe – focusing on privatization and foreign investment. I have recently extended this research stream with a large-scale big-data investigation into corruption in public procurement in the EU (Digital Whistleblower or DigiWhist).

In addition to the study of the political economy of postcommunism, I have a variety of publications and an active research agenda on the political economy of public health around the world. This project has as its goal the bringing together of the type of variables, analyses and methods used in political economy with public health research. Part of this project is the investigation of the public health outcomes of various political and economic processes, including macro- and micro-economic policy. I am currently carrying out a large-scale multi-level survey to investigate the relationship between radical privatization programs and the postcommunist mortality crisis (PrivMort). The other part of this project involves studying the political, economic and social determinants of rules governing the allocation of health resources at the national and international level. I have also published on and continue to research the global governance of public health, with an international power structure analysis of the budgeting process of the World Health Organization. I am currently studying the political, social and economic forces related to the innovation, pricing, and reimbursement of Sovaldi, a revolutionary but highly expensive drug for Hepatitis C.