Professor Lord 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 Well-Being Programme. Since 2000 he has been a member of the House of Lords.

He is a labour economist who has made major contributions on unemployment, inflation, inequality and post-Communist reform.

Layard currently works on how to produce a happier society and his influential book Happiness – Lessons from a New Science was published in 2005 and has sold 125,000 copies in 20 languages. A second edition was published earlier this year. He also advises the government on mental health policy and is an architect of the policy of “Improving Access to Psychological Therapy”. He is also an adviser to the Office of National Statistics on the measurement of national well-being and Chairman of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Health and Well-Being