Centre for Economic Performance
London School of Economics
Press coverage and releases
Times Higher Education - Academic research has ‘bigger role to play in new UK government’
The Telegraph - Force workers to retire later to reduce misery, Reeves urged
3 September 2024
Financial Times - Policies must be justified by their wellbeing-to-cost ratio
3 September 2024
The Guardian - Extra for mental health would help UK more than new roads, study says
3 September 2024
TES - School mental health teams’ impact outweighs costs, say experts
20 August 2024
Financial Times - The UK skills crisis holding back growth
The Guardian - World Happiness Report sounds alarm about the welfare of young people
The Observer - It’s not the economy, stupid: wellbeing is the real vote-winner
Friday 12 January 2024
Guardian - Britain is a poorer, sicker place.
The London School of Economics’ Prof Richard Layard, labour economist and co-editor of the annual world happiness report, says: “We are the only country where happiness has not recovered since Covid.”
January 2024
New Statesman - Westminster Reimagined with Armando Iannucci
How much value do we put on happiness in Britain?
Sunday 31 December 2023
Guardian - Labour should make UK leader in wellbeing-informed policy
Call by economics of happiness expert Richard Layard comes as research agency set up under David Cameron is to be axed in Whitehall cuts.
December 2023
New Statesman - Happiness could be Labour’s secret election weapon
The economist Richard Layard advises politicians to take well-being more seriously.
Thursday 26 October 2023
FT - Rationing access to apprenticeships is increasing the UK’s skills deficit
Places for vocational training should be funded in the same way as degrees and match demand from young learners
Thursday 6 July 2023
New Statesman - not everyone goes to university
Richard Layard argues that focusing on university tuition fees neglects half of young people – and past successes with apprenticeships.
Tuesday 7 March 2023
FT - Make wellbeing central to public policy
Richard Layard explains the benefits of making wellbeing a core public policy.
Wednesday 21 September 2022
Richard Layard Recognised as a Clarivate Citation Laureate 2022
Professor Richard Layard has been honoured for his “pioneering contributions to the economics of happiness and subjective wellbeing” by information company Clarivate.
Professor Lord Layard, co-director of the community wellbeing programme and former director of the Centre for Economic Performance, was named alongside fellow wellbeing researchers Richard Easterlin, university professor emeritus of economics, University of Southern California, and Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science, Warwick University.
The Citation Laureate award recognises individuals whose research publications are highly cited within the Web of Science™ database, which is owned by Clarivate.
Of the 396 world-class researchers recognised as citation laureates in the past 20 years, 64 have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.
Professor Layard said: “Researchers should be thinking in terms of how they can make the world a better place. When they’ve got an insight, they need to be revealing it in a proactive way to people who can implement it – policymakers, leading business figures, leading figures in the educational world, wherever it is.”
Wednesday 6 July 2022
CITP Blog - Inclusion and Wellbeing
Our team at LSE recently analysed the findings from major longitudinal surveys in Britain, Germany, Australia and the US.1 The findings were similar in all these countries, and Figure 1 gives the results of a cross-sectional multiple regression equation for Britain...
Monday 4 July 2022
Press Release - Make Wellbeing the Goal: A Wellbeing Manifesto
Four senior economists (Richard Layard, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Carol Graham and Gus O'Donnell) have issued a Manifesto for Wellbeing. They urge that people’s wellbeing should be the ultimate goal for governments, for business and for schools: “let’s put wellbeing first”.
To politicians they point out that voting in a general election is determined more by people’s wellbeing than by their economic situation. So Finance Ministers should insist that public money only goes to those policies which give the highest wellbeing bang for the buck...