In conversation with . . . Professor Richard (Lord) Layard

Professor Richard (Lord) Layard, was until recently founderdirector of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE) which is Europe’s leading economic research centre and was recently awarded a Queen’s Prize for Higher Education. Since 2000 he has been a member of the House of Lords and has written widely on unemployment, inflation, education, inequality and postCommunist reform. Richard Layard was an early advocate of welfaretowork and coauthored the influential book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market (OUP 1991). Between 1997 and 2001 he was a consultant to the UK Labour government on unemployment (including the New Deal) and education policy in relation to post-16 year olds. His current focus is on happiness, aiming to achieve a unified understanding of the insights of economics,psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. In March 2005 Penguin published his latest book,Happiness. Richard Layard was speaking to ippr’s Director, Nick Pearce.