Prof Lord Richard Layard
Founder & Director of LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance,
author of ‘Happiness: Lessons from a New Science’
Richard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he was until 2003 the founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He now heads the Centre’s Programme on Well-Being. Since 2000 he has been a member of the House of Lords.
He is currently working on how to produce a happier society. His book Happiness – Lessons from a New Science was published in March 2005 and appears in 20 languages. He is coordinator of the Local Wellbeing Project in which three local authorities have introduced the Resilience Programme into the curriculum for their 11-year-olds, and will in due course be offering a guaranteed apprenticeship to all teenagers who want it. Richard Layard is an active member of the Children’s Society Inquiry into The Good Childhood, and is drafting the Inquiry’s Report.
He has worked on unemployment, inflation, education, inequality, and post-Communist reform. He was an early advocate of the welfare-to-work approach to European unemployment, and co-authored Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market (OUP 1991, 2nd ed 2005) which has influenced policy in many countries.
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