Biography
Professor Lord Layard is a labour economist who has 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 in how cost-benefit analysis can better reflect what people really value. He was founder-director of LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, and is now director of the Centre's programme on Wellbeing. 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 he co-authored a book called The Origins of Happiness: The science of wellbeing over the life course. His latest book, Wellbeing: Science and Policy (2023), is the first textbook on wellbeing science.