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

He has written widely on unemployment, inflation, education, inequality and post-Communist reform. He was an early advocate of the welfare-to-work approach to unemployment, and co-authored the influential book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market (OUP 1991).

From 1997-2001 he helped implement these policies as a consultant to the Labour government. He was also involved in the educational policy development of post-16 year olds.

His current research focus is on happiness, aiming to achieve a unified understanding of the insights of economics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. He also have strong interests in unemployment and educational policy.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in January 2004.
In 2008 he received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics jointly with Stephen Nickell.