Member of the House of Lords, Professor and Founder-Director of LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance and Co-director of the Centre’s program on Community Wellbeing
Richard Layard is emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he founded and directed the Centre for Economic Performance – one of Europe’s leading research centres. He is now Co-Director of the Centre’s Community Wellbeing Programme and a member of the UK House of Lords where he focuses on education, employment, mental health, and of course, wellbeing policy. Until 2000, he worked mainly on unemployment and inequality and co-authored the influential book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. Since 2000, he has been studying happiness. In 2005 he wrote the best-selling book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, translated into 20 languages. He has had huge influence on making psychological therapy more widely available in Britain’s National Health Service, and in 2014 co-authored Thrive on how we can secure a better deal for mental health. In 2018 he co-authored The Origins of Happiness – an analysis of what determines our happiness, based on a range of longitudinal datasets. Richard’s latest book Can we be happier? The evidence and ethics for better lives explores how teachers, managers, health professionals, couples, community leaders, economists, scientists, politicians, and we as individuals can create a happier world. He is also co-founder of Action for Happiness, an international movement to promote a happier way of living.