Richard Layard is the founder-Director of the Centre for Economic Performance – a leading inter-disciplinary research centre at the London School of Economics. He is currently co-Director of their Community Wellbeing programme.

Layard is an economist who wants public policy to be targeted at the wellbeing of the people. To this end he has written 6 books and some 40 articles. The first book, Happiness: Lessons from a new science (2005) was translated into 20 languages. The most recent (co-authored) book Wellbeing: Science and Policy is a field-defining textbook, showing how wellbeing science can supplement traditional economics by providing a more complete account of what affects human wellbeing.
Since 2005 he has directed a research programme to develop this evidence base. Many of the results can be found in the co-authored book The Origins of Happiness (2018), as well as in numerous articles. He is also a founding co-editor of the annual World Happiness Report.