Expertise: wellbeing, labour, unemployment, educational policy, happiness
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Can We Be Happier? Evidence and ethics
with George Ward
Most people now realise that economic growth, however desirable, will not solve all our problems. Instead, we need a philosophy and a science which encompasses a much fuller range of human need and experience. This book argues that the goal for a society must be the greatest possible all round happiness, and shows how each of us can become more effective creators of happiness, both as citizens and in our own organisations....
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Online Appendices: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/CWBH/annexesCWBH.pdf
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Happiness: Lessons from a new science
In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average...
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Thrive: The power of psychological therapy
with David M. Clark
Britain has become a world leader in providing psychological therapies thanks to the work of Richard Layard and David Clark. But, even so, in Britain and worldwide the majority of people who need help still don't get treatment. This is both unjust and a false economy. This book argues for change...
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The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course
with Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Fleche, Nattavudh Powdthavee & George Ward
What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people's well-being? How would policy change if well-being were the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human priorities and to promote public policy changes that are based on what really matters to people. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive range of evidence from longitudinal data on over one hundred thousand individuals in Britain, the United States, Australia, and Germany, the authors consider the key factors that affect human well-being.
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A Good Childhood: Searching for values in a competitive age
with Judy Dunn
Every day the newspapers lament the problems facing our children - broken homes, pressures to eat and drink, the stress of exams.
But is life really more difficult for children than it was, and if so why?
And how can we make it better?
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World Happiness Reports
The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The report, the fifth one to come out since 2012, continues to gain global
recognition as governments, organisations and civil society increasingly use happiness indicators to inform their policy-making decisions.
World Happiness Report
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A Global Apollo Programme to combat climate change
Authored by a group of leading scientists, economists and businessmen,
this
report sets out a major global research programme to make carbon-free baseload electricity less costly than electricity from coal, and to do it within 10 years.
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Wellbeing and policy
An independent commission chaired by Gus O'Donnell, with Richard Layard, Angus Deaton, Martine Durand and David Halpern as its members, proposes a radical reform of public policy-making.
In the report,
Wellbeing and Policy, commissioned by the Legatum Institute,
the authors conclude that GDP is too narrow a measure of prosperity...
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Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market
with S. J. Nickell and Richard Jackman
This broad survey of unemployment will be a major source of reference
for both scholars and students. It aims to provide a basis for better
policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be
applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment...
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Tackling Unemployment
This book contains Layard's most influential articles on the subject of unemployment
- what causes unemployment and proposes remedies to reduce it. There is a strong focus on how unemployed people are treated and how this affects unemployment.
The book opens with Richard Layard's personal credo
Why I
am an Economist.
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Tackling Inequality
A companion to Tackling Unemployment, this book contains
Layard's most influential articles on education, equality and income
distribution and on the lessons of economic transition in Eastern Europe.
In it he argues that lifetime inequality is the basic inequality we should
worry about. In this context education is a powerful instrument of
redistribution, as well as a national investment.
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Richard Layard is a labour economist who worked for most of his life on how
to reduce unemployment and inequality. He is also one of the first economists to
work on happiness, and his main current interest is how better mental health
could improve our social and economic life.
Happiness and mental health
He has always believed, like the 18th Century Enlightenment, that societies should be judged by the happiness of the people. And since the 1970s he has urged fellow economists to return to the 18th and 19th century idea that public policy should maximise a social welfare function depending on the distribution of happiness. In 1980 he wrote, according to Richard Easterlin, "the first paper to focus specifically on the policy implications of empirical research on happiness". In 2005 he wrote Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, which was published in 20 languages. He continues to find significant effects of relative income on happiness and to emphasise the importance of non-income variables on aggregate happiness.
And in 2018, his next co-authored book will be published by Princeton University
Press, called The Origins of Happiness: The science of wellbeing over the
life course.
In particular he stresses the role of mental health and argues that psychological treatments ought to be much more widely available. Among other good effects, they pay for themselves through increased employment and reduced costs of other healthcare. His work here, with the distinguished psychologist David M. Clark, has led within the English National Health Service to the creation of a major programme of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) which is now treating nearly half a million people a year, of whom a half recover during treatment.
In 2009 he co-authored the Good Childhood Report which emphasised the importance of early intervention to improve the mental health of children. The Report's proposals led to the universal introduction of evidence-based treatment in child mental health. He is also actively involved in promoting mental health in schools, through
Healthy Minds, a 4-year secondary school curriculum in life skills being trialled in 30 schools.
In 2014 he wrote a popular book on mental health,
Thrive, jointly with David M. Clark. The book argues that spending more money on helping people to recover - and stay well - would actually strengthen the economy.
Like many others, Layard has pushed governments to measure the wellbeing of the population and was delighted when the British Prime Minister David Cameron announced in November 2010 that wellbeing would be a major government objective and be regularly measured in the national statistics.(Click here for his speech at the Conference launching this initiative.)
Worldwide, there is now a search for new models of progress. Professor Layard chaired the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Health and Wellbeing, which produced a report at Davos in January 2012, “WellBeing and Global Success”. The OECD has for some years been attempting to redefine progress, and in July 2011 the UN General Assembly advocated greater priority for policies that promote happiness. Richard co-edits,
with Jeff Sachs and John Helliwell, the
World Happiness Reports.
He was also a member of the Legatum Commission for Wellbeing Policy chaired by Gus O'Donnell. Its report on
Wellbeing and Policy was
published in March 2014
Richard Layard's concern with how to promote a happier society led him to co-found a new movement called
Action for Happiness,
which was launched in Spring 2011. Members from all backgrounds pledge to live
so as to create as much happiness as they can and as little misery. The movement
already more than 90,000 members from over 170 countries.
Unemployment, skills and inequality
On unemployment, in the 1980s Layard and colleagues developed the Layard-Nickell model of how the level of unemployment is determined. This has become the most commonly used model by European economists and governments. It assigns an important role to how unemployed people are treated, and provides the intellectual basis for the welfare-to-work policies introduced in many countries,
including Britain, Germany and Denmark.
The basic message is in Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. This was first published in 1991 and a second edition in 2005 shows how well the model predicts the development of unemployment in different countries since 1991.
On inequality, his work shows the key role of education in influencing the income of individuals and families. He has been a lifelong advocate of better education (including apprenticeship) for less academic youngsters,
and the case he made with Hilary Steedman have led to major increases in
apprenticeships and the 2009 Apprenticeship Act.
Other roles
In 1985 he founded the Employment Institute which has played a major role in
pushing the ideas of welfare-to-work. He was Chairman of the European
Commission's Macroeconomic Policy Group during the 1980s. From 1991-1997 he was
a part-time economic adviser to the Russian Government and from 1997 to 2001 a
part-time consultant to the British government on welfare-to-work and vocational
education.
In 2005 the British government accepted his proposals on psychological therapy and since then he has (as National Adviser) been heavily involved in implementing the government programme of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT). In 2010, this was extended to cover children.
In 2000 he was made a member of the House of Lords, and is currently a member
of its
Economic Affairs Committee.
In 2014 Layard proposed, with six other colleagues, a
Global Apollo Programme of
internationally coordinated research to produce clean electricity cheaper than
coal-based electricity within 10 years, which provided the model for Mission
Innovation - the major international programme launched by Presidents Obama,
Modi and Hollande at the UNFCCC in Paris in November 2015.
Selected Writings:
Happiness
"Direct wellbeing measurement and policy appraisal: a discussion paper" (with P. Frijters) Working paper. February 2018.
"Wellbeing
measurement and cost-effectiveness analysis", Working paper, July
2016 "Promoting Secular Ethics" in J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard and J. Sachs (eds) .
World Happiness
Report 2016
Update. New York, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2016.
“How to make policy when happiness is the goal" (with G O'Donnell) in J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard and J. Sachs (eds) .
World Happiness Report
2015. New York, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2015.
“What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of well-being"(with A.E Clark, F Cornaglia, N Powdthavee and J Vernoit),
The Economic Journal, 124(F720-738), November 2014 “The causes of happiness and misery" (with A. E Clark and C Senik) in J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard and J. Sachs (eds) .World Happiness Report
2012. New York, The Earth Institute, Columbia University: 58-89,
2012.
Happiness : Lessons from a new science
Penguin, Second Edition, 2011.
Download Annex
“Measuring Subjective Well-Being for Public Policy" (with P. Dolan and R. Metcalfe), Office for National Statistics, February 2011
“Does Relative Income Matter? Are the Critics Right?" (with G. Mayraz and S. Nickell) in E Diener, J Helliwell and D Kahneman (eds) International Differences in Well-Being, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010
"The Greatest Happiness Principle: Its time has come”,
Well-being: How to lead the good life and what government should do to help, (eds) S Griffiths and R Reeves, Social Market Foundation, July 2009
A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age
(with Judy Dunn), Penguin, 2009.
“The marginal utility of income” (with S. Nickell and G. Mayraz), Journal of Public Economics, Special Issue: Happiness and Public Economics (eds) T. Besley and E. Saez, Vol 92, Nos 8-9, August 2008
"The Teaching of Values", Ashby Lecture, University of Cambridge, 2 May 2007
Happiness and public policy: a challenge to the profession, Economic Journal, 116, C24-C33, March 2006
"The Return of Happiness: Why wellbeing should be at the heart of politics", Prospect, March 2005
Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures delivered at LSE on 3rd, 4th and 5th March 2003:
Happiness: Has Social Science A Clue?
Lecture 1: What is happiness? Are we getting happier?
Lecture 2: Income and happiness: rethinking economic policy
Lecture 3: How can we make a happier society
“Human satisfactions and public policy”, Economic Journal, December 1980. Reprinted in Richard A Easterlin (ed), Happiness in Economic, Edward Elgar, 2002.
Mental health
'Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?', (with Sarah Flèche)
Kyklos, 70(1), Pages 27-41.
'The economics of mental health'. IZA World of Labor 2017: 321 doi:
10.15185/izawol.321
'Why We Should Spend More on Mental Health,' American Journal of Medical Research, 3(1): 188-206, 2016.
"Healthy
Young Minds: Transforming the mental health of children" (with A Hagell),
Report of the WISH Mental Health and Wellbeing in Children Forum 2015, World
Innovation Summit for Health (WISH).
Thrive:
The power of evidence-based psychological therapies
(with David M.Clark) Allen Lane, 2014.
Download Annex
"Mental Illness and Unhappiness" (with D Chisholm, Vikram Patel, S Saxena) in J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard and J. Sachs (eds) .World Happiness Report
2013. New York, The Earth Institute, Columbia University: 38-53,
2013.
Mental Health: The New Frontier for Labour Economics, CEP Discussion Paper No1213, May 2013.
"Enhancing Recovery Rates in IAPT Services: Lessons from analysis of the Year One data" (with A Gyani, R Shafran, and D Clark), Behaviour Research and Therapy, Vol 51, Issue 9, Pages 597-606, 2013
How Mental Health Loses Out in the NHS, The Centre for Economic Performance's Mental Health Policy group, June 2012
“Improving Access to Psychological Therapy: Initial Evaluation of Two UK Demonstration Sites” (with D Clark, R Smithies, D Richards, R Suckling and B Wright), Behaviour Research and Therapy, Vol 47, Issue 8, Pages 637-728, August 2009
"Improving Tier 2-3 CAMHS", July 2009
“Cost-benefit analysis of psychological therapy”, (with D. Clark, M. Knapp and G. Mayraz), National Institute Economic Review, No 202, October 2007.
The Depression Report: A New Deal for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, The Centre for Economic Performance's Mental Health Policy group, June 2006
“The case for psychological treatment centres”, BMJ, 332: 1030-2, April 2006
“Mental health: Britain’s biggest social problem?", Paper presented at the No.10 Strategy Unit Seminar on Mental Health, 20th January 2005
"Mental Health: the Choice of Therapy for All", CentrePiece, December 2005 This article is an edited version of the inaugural Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health Lecture delivered on 12 September 2005.
Unemployment, skills and inequality
"A Job Guarantee", with Paul Gregg, March 2009
“Unemployment experience: some implications for France”, Travail et Emploi, DARES, No 118, April-June 2009
Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market, (with S. Nickell and R. Jackman) Oxford University Press, 1991; 2nd ed., 2005
“Full Employment for Europe” in (eds) A Lopez-Claros, M Porter and K Schwab The Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006: Policies Underpinning Rising Prosperity,World Economic Forum, 2005
“Apprenticeship and the skills gap” in “Learning to Succeed: the next decade”, the National Commission on Education Follow-up Group, Occasional Paper, University of Brighton, 2003
"Full Employment Is Not Just a Dream" (with S. Nickell), CentrePiece, February 2003
See also Jaap de Koning, Richard Layard, Steve Nickell and Niels Westergaard-Nielsen, "Policies for Full Employment", Department for Works and Pensions Report, March 2004
"Britain's Record on Skills",(with S. McIntosh and A. Vignoles), Paper No' CEEDP0023, May 2002
"Welfare to Work and the New Deal" World Economics, Vol. 1, No 2 April-June 2000
“Welfare-to-Work and the Fight against Long-Term Unemployment” (with T. Boeri and S. Nickell), Research Brief No. 206, Department for Education and Skills, London, June 2000
“Labour Market Institutions and Economic Performance” (with S. Nickell) in O. Ashenfelter and D Card (eds), Handbook of Labour Economics, Vol. 3C, North-Holland, 1999
Tackling Inequality, Macmillan, 1999
Tackling Unemployment, Macmillan, 1999
"European versus US Unemployment: Different Responses to Increased Demand for skill?", (with R. Jackman, M. Manacorda, and B. Petrongolo), Paper No' CEPDP0349, June 1997
"Combatting Unemployment: Is Flexibility Enough?", (with
R. Jackman and S. Nickell), Paper No' CEPDP0293, March 1996
"Lifelong Learning" (with P. Robinson and H. Steedman), Paper No' CEPOP09, December 1995
Britain’s Training Deficit, Avebury, (edited with K. Mayhew and G. Owen) 1994.
Stopping Unemployment, The Employment Institute, (with J. Philpott) September 1991.
The Performance of the British Economy, (edited with R. Dornbusch), Oxford University Press, 1987.
Handbook of Labor Economics, (edited with O. Ashenfelter), North‑Holland, 1987. Fifth reprint 2003 (Vol 1).
How to Beat Unemployment, Oxford University Press, 1986.
The Causes of Poverty, (with D. Piachaud and M. Stewart) Background Paper No. 5, Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, HMSO, 1978.
Other
Global Apollo Programme to tackle climate change (with D King,
J Browne, G O'Donnell, M Rees, N Stern, A Turner), LSE Centre for Economic
Performance, 2015
The Coming Russian Boom, (with J. Parker), The Free Press, 1996.
East-West Migration: The Alternatives, M.I.T. Press, 1992. (with O. Blanchard, R. Dornbusch and P. Krugman).
Macroeconomics. A Text for Russia, Wiley, Moscow, 1994 (in Russian).
Cost-Benefit Analysis, (Harmondsworth: Penguin) with long introduction, 1972. Second Edition: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (edited with S. Glaister)
Microeconomic Theory, McGraw‑Hill (U.S.), 1978. (with A.A. Walters). Reissued as McGraw Hill International Edition, 1987.
CEP Publications
Book
Can We Be Happier? Evidence and Ethics
Richard Layard
January 2020
Paper No' :
Tags: happiness; wellbeing
CEP discussion paper
A Happy Choice: Wellbeing as the Goal of Government
Andrew E. Clark, Paul Frijters, Christian Krekel and Richard Layard
October 2019
Paper No' CEPDP1658:
Read Abstract |
Full Paper 
JEL Classification: D60; D70; H11; I31
Tags: subjective wellbeing; life satisfaction; public policy; political economy; social welfare
This paper has been published as:
A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government, Paul Frijters, Andrew E. Clark, Christian Krekel and Richard Layard, Behavioural Public Policy, Vol. 4, Special Issue 2, pp. 126-165, July 2020
CEP discussion paper
What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of Well-Being
Andrew E. Clark, Francesca Cornaglia, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and James Vernoit
October 2013
Paper No' CEPDP1245:
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Full Paper
JEL Classification: A12; D60; H00; I31
Tags: well-being; life-satisfaction; intervention; model; life-course; emotional health; conduct; intellectual performance; success
This paper has been published as:
What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of WellBeing, Richard Layard, Andrew Clark, Francesca Cornaglia, Nattavudh Powdthavee and James Vernoit, Economic Journal, Feature Issue, Vol. 124, Issue 580, pp. F720-F738, November 2014
This paper has been published as:
Son of my Father? The Life-cycle Analysis of Well-being: Introduction, Andrew Clark, Economic Journal, Feature Issue, Vol. 124, Issue 580, November 2014
CentrePiece article
In brief: The future of finance
Peter Boone, C Goodhart, Andrew Haldane, Simon Johnson, John Kay, Andrew Large, Richard Layard, Andrew Smithers, A Turner, S Wadhwani, Martin Wolf and Paul Woolley
November 2010
Paper No' CEPCP327:
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Full Paper
CentrePiece 15 (2) Autumn 2010
Tags: finance; credit crunch
The Future of Finance: The LSE Report was published in September 2010 (ISBN: 978 0 85328 458 1).To order a copy: call 0845 458 9910; See http://www.futureoffinance.org.uk
CentrePiece article
Getting People Back to Work
Richard Layard
October 1998
Paper No' CEPCP060:
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CentrePiece 3 (3) Autumn 1998
CEP discussion paper
Labour Market Institutions and Economic Performance
Richard Layard and Stephen Nickell
September 1998
Paper No' CEPDP0407:
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CEP report
Investment Prospects In Russia
Richard Layard and George Lucas
February 1997
Paper No' CEPSP04:
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CentrePiece article
How to Cut Unemployment
Richard Layard
February 1996
Paper No' CEPCP001:
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CentrePiece 1 (1) Spring 1996
CEP discussion paper
How Much Unemployment is Needed for Restructuring?: The Russian Experience
Richard Layard and Ansgar Richter
April 1995
Paper No' CEPDP0238:
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CEP discussion paper
Who Gains and Who Loses from Russian Credit Expansion
Richard Layard and Ansgar Richter
July 1994
Paper No' CEPDP0200:
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CEP discussion paper
Can Russia Control Inflation?
Richard Layard
September 1993
Paper No' CEPDP0170:
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CEP discussion paper
The Conditions of Life
A Illarionov, Richard Layard and P Orzag
August 1993
Paper No' CEPDP0165:
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CEP occasional paper
Japanese Capitalism, Anglo-Saxon Capitalism; How Will the Darwinian Contest Turn Out?
Ron Dore and Richard Layard
October 1992
Paper No' CEPOP04:
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CEP discussion paper
Unemployment in the OECD Countries
Richard Layard and Stephen Nickell
June 1992
Paper No' CEPDP0081:
CEP occasional paper
A Code of Conduct for Inter-State Trade
Richard Layard and Andre Sapir
April 1992
Paper No' CEPOP03:
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CEP discussion paper
How to Privatise
O Blanchard and Richard Layard
August 1991
Paper No' CEPDP0050:
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CEP discussion paper
Understanding Unemployment
Richard Layard
May 1990
Paper No' CEPDP0004:
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CEP discussion paper
Economic Change in Poland
O Blanchard and Richard Layard
May 1990
Paper No' CEPDP0003:
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CEP discussion paper
Wage Bargaining and Incomes Policy: Possible lessons for Eastern Europe
Richard Layard and Diane J. Reyniers
May 1990
Paper No' CEPDP0002:
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CEP discussion paper
Mismatch: A Framework for Thought
Richard Jackman, Richard Layard and S Savouri
May 1990
Paper No' CEPDP0001:
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![[Photo: Richard LAYARD]](/staffphotos/richard_layard.jpg)
