Richard Layard is Co-Director of the Wellbeing Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance, and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the LSE. He is one of the world's leading experts on the economics of wellbeing. He has written six books on the subject including Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2005; translated into 20 languages). Until 2000 he worked on unemployment, co-writing the leading book Unemployment (1991). He is a member of the Hose of Lords and an active campaigner for better policy-making.