Lawrence King
Professor of Economics
Lawrence King (Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles 1997) is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He previously was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University, and Professor of Sociology and Political Economy at the University of Cambridge. He has written extensively on the transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe, focusing on privatization and foreign investment. More recently he has investigated a diverse set of topics in the political economy of public health, a multidisciplinary project that has the goal of bringing together the types of variables, analyses and methods used in comparative political economy with public health research. Examples of this project include the effect of radical privatization programs on the postcommunist mortality crisis, the impact of IMF conditionalities in shaping health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, the role of financialization on drug innovation and pricing, and the influence of deindustrialization and incarceration in shaping health inequalities in the U.S. He has published more than 70 articles in various journals, including The Lancet, BMJ, P.N.A.S., PLoSMED, JAMA, Social Science and Medicine, American Journal of Sociology, American Review of Sociology, and World Development.
Recent Research
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Hazardous Drinking in Privatized Industrial Towns of Russia
December 2023
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The International Monetary Fund and Neonatal Mortality Rates, 1985-2018
December 2023
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Past Economic Decline Predicts Opioid Prescription Rates
December 2022
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Structural Adjustment Programmes and Infectious Disease Mortality
July 2022
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Corporate Political Power and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1981–2002: The Role of the Policy-Planning Network
May 2022
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Deaths of Despair in Comparative Perspective
April 2022
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Deindustrialization, Social Disintegration, and Health: A Neoclassical Sociological Approach
March 2022
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Don’t Worry about the Drug Industry’s Profits When Considering a Waiver on COVID-19 Intellectual Property Rights
February 2022
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Deindustrialization and the Postsocialist Mortality Crisis
April 2021
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Did Alcohol Policy Really Cause the Postsocialist Mortality Crisis? Revisiting the Rebound and Affordability Hypotheses
April 2021