Richard Layard Research Articles

A good childhood Searching for values in a competitive age Richard Layard, Judy Dunn and the panel of The Good Childhood Inquiry Penguin, London, 2009.

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Health, Wealth or Wisdom? Religion and the Paradox of Prosperity

AbstractThe so-called 'happiness hypothesis', associated with the work of the economist Richard Layard, has attracted much public debate over recent years. Its main contention is that despite rising levels of material prosperity in the west, incidence of recorded happiness and greater quality of life has not increased accordingly. In considering the major contributory factors to happiness and well-being, however, Layard is not alone in identifying the significance of religious values and participation in religion for positive and enduring levels of happiness. In response, this article critiques some of the evidence correlating religion and well-being, as well as considering the broader and much more vexed question of how far public policy is capable of incorporating questions of belief and value into its indicators of happiness and the good life. Drawing on traditions of virtue ethics as the cultivation of 'the life well-lived', I ask whether specifically Christian accounts of human flourishing and the good life still have any bearing in the wider public domain, and what 'rules of engagement' might need to be articulated in any dialogue between Christian values and the discourse of theology and a pluralist society.

Reading ‘Happiness’: CBT and the Layard thesis

This review essay examines an important recent contribution from an economist Richard Layard to debates about the social and economic sources of mental distress and ways of responding to the latter. His book Happiness is one of many contributions from him about these topics. It provides a persuasive case for ‘upstream’ causes of mental health problems, which includes a critique of modern consumerism. A much less persuasive case is made though for therapeutic social engineering in response to psychological casualties of these socio-economic forces.

The Principle of Greatest Happiness in Western Economic Thought and its Relation to Buddhist Economics

Western economic thinkers in the 19th century rediscovered the principle of greatest happiness (PGH). However, as Eastern philosophical and religious thinking shows it was part of common knowledge in Buddhism and Hinduism over the past millennia. PGH did not have the same agenda as later on utilitarism of John Stanley Jevons, with the utility maximization principle (UMP) of individuals disconnected from the rest of the society. The UMP was more an outcome of a fusion between moral ethical thinking as a social phenomenon with the Newtonian principles of mechanics based on differential calculus. The huge success of natural sciences in the 19th century during the industrial revolution was too tempting not to imitate its methodologies and concepts in the social sciences as social physics (SP). This kind of approach still has many followers unsurprisingly in the natural science community nowadays. The paper studies these interconnections between these different strands of Western thinking which lead after a century to the neoclassical paradigm in economics which took the UMP as its foundation for economic analysis. Richard Layard, an English labour economist, pointed out among others by empirical research that wellbeing or happiness is not significantly correlated with an ever increasing material wealth. Here might emerge a bridge between Buddhist economics and the recent rediscovery of the PGH in modern Western economics. The paper will close with the suggestion of some first possible corrections necessary for UMP to obtain a PGH consistent with the current challenges to the global society.

Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

Book Review: – Richard Layard – Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

Book Review: – Richard Layard – Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

What's wrong with happiness?

In this article Michael Rustin argues that greater well-being is unlikely to be promoted in a system whose main goal is increased economic efficiency. He reviews debates concerning the existence of separate measures of public happiness and income levels. He then discusses whether increased ‘happiness’, with its philosophical origins in utilitarianism, is the best way of framing the idea of the good for individuals and societies. Finally, he focusses on the way in which Richard Layard has framed these questions, particularly on the way in which he addresses the problems of mental health by means of his proposal for a large-scale programme of cognitive behaviour therapy.

A Review of Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, and Richard Jackman's Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market by Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, and Richard Jackman (Oxford University Press 2005) is the second edition of a book first published in 1991. The second edition is identical to the first except for a long introduction, which reviews the conclusions of the first edition in the light of the following fifteen years. I basically agree with the authors that the book's framework and conclusions have withstood the test of time very well. I then assess progress since 1991 and point to a number of directions in which progress needs to be achieved.

Unemployment Benefits, Unemployment Duration, and Post-Unemployment Jobs: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Structural unemployment appears to be strongly correlated with the potential duration of unemployment across Organization for Eco­ nomic Co­operation and Development (OECD) countries (Stephen Nickell and Richard Layard 1999). The idea is that extended benefit duration discourages searching for a job and thus leads to prolonged unemployment. In this paper, I propose testing this idea by studying discontinuous changes in benefit dura­ tion at the age of 50, which are embedded in the Austrian unemployment insurance system. In particular, job seekers who become unem­ ployed at 50 years of age or older and satisfy a previous work requirement are eligible for 52 weeks of extended benefits rather than 39 weeks. Moreover, due to special restructuring demands in the state­owned steel sector, Austria temporarily implemented a regional extended benefit program (REBP) covering job seekers who enter unemployment at 50 years of age or older, who had been living in certain regions of Austria for at least six months, and who satisfy a previous work requirement. Those individuals were eligible for 209 weeks of benefits instead of 39 weeks. Austrian unemployment insurance rules create a rich design allowing us to study the effects of small increases in benefits by 13 weeks (39 to 52 weeks) in regions that were excluded from the extended benefit program and large benefit extensions by 170 weeks (39 weeks to 209 weeks) in regions with access to the extended benefit program. Because these benefit entitlement rules were discontinuous in age, the corresponding causal effects can be identified in a regression discontinuity framework. This paper contributes to two strands of the literature. The first strand is concerned with measuring the effects of potential benefit dura­ tion on unemployment duration. Recent con­ tributions to this literature include David Card Unemployment Benefits, Unemployment Duration, and Post-Unemployment Jobs: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Happiness and mental health policy: A sociological critique

Background: This paper briefly outlines the work of economist Richard Layard and his proposed policy solutions to increase happiness within society. Layard's work is influencing policy and has particular relevance for mental health policy and service development.Aims: The focus of the paper lies in a critique of Layard's work in three areas. The first is that Layard's approach does little to tackle the structural inequalities within society, which are known to be prime indicators of mental ill health. The second critique is that Layard's proposals form a misguided attempt to use therapy as a way of compensating for a breakdown in community. The third and related critique is that Layard's proposals suggest a medicalization of social issues in ways that individualize social problems. The paper ends with a reflection upon broader questions not addressed within Layard's analysis.Conclusions: The paper concludes that Layard's proposal, though in many respects attractive, may have fundamental flaws and these are open to sociological analysis and critique.

Richard Layard's Happiness: Worn Philosophy, Weak Psychology, Wrong Method and Just Plain Bad Economics!

Richard Layard believes that he has discovered the roots of happiness. He posits that: those in the West have been duped into playing the zero‐sum game of trying to outdo everyone else; that unhappiness is associated with all forms of rivalry; that happiness is located in the socialist ethos; and that pubic policy should be set to inhibit activities that bring extra income without extra happiness. When the salient features of the analysis are examined, they are found to be seriously flawed. Although Layard might be applauded for seeking to broaden the remit of economics, a narrow utilitarian preoccupation with activities that make life better or worse against a linear scale delivers an analysis of an amoral and self‐contained agency that reveals virtually nothing of the socio‐psychology of the human condition.

Let's talk: a different take on improving access to psychological therapies

The recent focus on improving access to psychological therapies led by Richard Layard has generated wide‐scale debate. This article looks at this debate and the potential long‐term implications of Layard's recommendations.

The market and the pursuit of happiness

r l • h e market doesn't make us happy--or at least not appy enough. That, at any rate, is the complaint of the British economist Lord Richard Layard, whose Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, is only one of a number of recent contributions to the burgeoning field of "happiness economics." Taking as their point of departure the observation that self-reported happiness or "subjective well being" seems not to have appreciated markedly in the principal Western countries over the past fifty years, despite steady gains in income, Layard and company advocate infusing classical economics with a strong dose of contemporary psychology to produce happier marginal returns. "Smithian laissez-faire is not sufficient to achieve [the greatest happinessl," Layard observes, adding that "we need a fundamental reform: we have to implant the substantive findings of psychology into the framework of economics." From the new science of positive (or hedonic) psychology--the study of what makes human beings happy, not sad--Layard and others believe they can draw a relatively precise picture of what the Nobel Laureate in economics Daniel Kahneman calls "objective happiness," isolating the basic sources and indicators of positive affect or mood. With this information in hand, the task of the policymaker is apparently clear. "Happiness should become the goal of policy," Layard writes, "and the progress of national happiness should be measured and analysed as closely as the growth of GNP." What the tiny mountain kingdom of Bhutan has already adopted as its basic social indicator----GNH (Gross National Happiness), as opposed to GNP--should now be embraced by the West. The claim that happiness can be managed scientifically, of course, is hardly new. It dates back at least as far as the early eighteenth century, when the Scottish moralist Frances Hutcheson ventured an "attempt to introduce a mathematical calculation in subjects of morality." The ridicule that followed his preliminary efforts did nothing to prevent Jeremy Bentham, decades later, from speaking similarly of "applying arithmetical calculation to the elements of happiness," while proposing his infamous "felicific calculus" to crunch the numbers of social welfare. Despite his failure to solve the happiness equation--and that of many others ever since--the quest continues unabated. Layard, who, in fact, presents himself as a Neo-Benthamite, is merely the most recent in a long line of social scientists who have dreamed of legislating happincss. This long search for the philosopher's stone of objective happiness should give us pause in accepting too hastily the findings of the new economics of felicity. But at the same time, the long history of criticism of the market on the grounds of its failure to promote happiness should also make us sensitive to l,ayard's critique. For his reservations, like his quest itself, are hardly without precedent. Well before the birth of modern commercial societies in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, skeptics were already decrying the unhappy consequences of market activity. Whereas Christians and neo-classicists worried about the corrupting influence of lucre and trade, classical republicans argued that luxury and commerce sapped moral virtue--with similarly destructive results. For his part, Jean-Jacques Rousseau brought together elements of both these traditions in the mid-eighteenth century to mount an innovative critique of the unhappy consequences of commercial society. "In the midst of so much industry, arts, luxury, and magnificence," he observed in the Second Discourse, the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1754), "we daily deplore human miseries, and we find the burden of our existence rather hard to bear with all the ills that weigh it down." A principal source of this predicament, Rousseau argued, was the social pressure imposed on individuals in commercial society to yearn for ever more. Continually comparing ourselves to others--and striving always to outdo them--we yearned inauthentically, developing needs and desires that ranged far beyond our true sources of satisfaction. Once a society had reached that stage of development, Rousseau explained in an early draft of the Social Contract, the choice was

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

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

Reviews

Books reviewed:Andrew Zimbalist, May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy.Herve Moulin, Fair Division and Collective Welfare.Stephanie A. Bell and Edward J. Nell (eds), Does Money's Origin Matter? The State, the Market and the Euro, Chartalism vs. Metalism in the Theory of Money.Richard Layard, Happiness. Has Social Science a Clue?.Amnon Levy and João Ricardo Faria (eds), Economic Growth, Inequality and Migration.Stephen L. Ross and John Yinger (eds), The Colour of Credit, Mortgage Discrimination, Research Methodology, and Fair‐Lending Enforcement.Paul Strangio, Keeper of the Faith. A Biography of Jim Cairnes.

Emerging from communism: lessons from Russia, China, and Eastern Europe

Why so much pain? an overview, Richard Layard output - causes of the decline and the recovery, Stanislaw Gomulka inflation - causes, consequences, and cures, Peter Boone, Jakob Horder privatization and restructuring in central and eastern Europe, Saul Estrin bank restructuring and enterprise reform, Sweder van wijnberger unemployment and restructuring, Richard Jackman why China grew, Wing Thye Woo why China grew - the role of decentralization, Chenggang Xu, Juzhong Zhunag.

The Swedish Model in an Era of Mass Unemployment

This article can be seen as an introduction to Richard Layard's contribution in this issue and presents the essential features of the Swedish model for full employment and economic stability. It discusses the role of labour market policy for the model and argues that this policy alone is incapable of eliminating mass unemployment.

THE NATURAL RATE: AN ATTRACTOR FOR ACTUAL UNEMPLOYMENT, OR AN ATTRACTEE?

AbstractThis article reviews the contributions of Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman, The Unemployment Crisis, Oxford U.P., 1994; and Edmund S. Phelps, Structural Slumps: The Modern Equilibrium Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Assets, Harvard U.P. 1994 to the literature on the determinants of the equilibrium rate of unemployment. The key issue is whether the doctrine of monetary neutrality, which is the hallmark of the natural rate of unemployment hypothesis investigated in the two volumes under review, is tenable with regard to equilibrium unemployment. The conclusion is that the influence of actual on equilibrium unemployment violates the neutrality axiom, and that the natural rate is as much an attractee as attractor for actual unemployment.

The Coming Russian Boom: A Guide to New Markets and Politics

Since the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991, Westerners have been speculating about the future of its vast and long-oppressive economy. Politicians, economists, and businesspeople alike have watched with great interest as the new Russia has scrambled to get on its feet. As support for the communists has waned and waxed, Westerners have worried: Are Russia's troubles merely the growth pains of a rich new market waiting to take off? Or should businessmen and tourists stay away? bottom line, argue Richard Layard and John Parker, is a healthy and strong one. Democracy and free markets have taken root in Russia for good. authors offer a soup-to-nuts analysis of the Russian economy, along with its political and social underpinnings, to demonstrate just how successful the reforms have been and what they mean for Western businessmen. Layard and Parker argue that Russia has passed the crucial point of dependency on Boris Yeltsin; it has built a successful multiparty democracy; and it has passed through the worst of the economic aftershocks of communism. Inflation is finally under control, and with the growing success of privatization, many opportunities have emerged for both Russians and foreigners. Political shifts notwithstanding, Layard and Parker foresee a bright future for Russia, graced by strong economic growth, based on private enterprise. They argue that Russia's economy will grow faster over the next twenty years than most emerging markets, and that foreigners will reap good returns from investing in its markets and its amazing natural resources. The Coming Russian Boom introduces Westerners to a Russia that is far healthier and more promising than the one they have read about in the papers, and shows how the greatest political-economic challenge of the post-Cold War world has become a resounding and exemplary triumph. It offers specific suggestions and guidelines for entrepreneurs, investors, and analysts. And it uses underlying economic structure to illuminate the surface confusion that will always be Russia.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:The Workers of Nations: Industrial Relations in a Global Economy, edited by Sanford M. Jacoby.Britain's Training Deficit: The Centre for Economic Performance Report, edited by Richard Layard, Ken Mayhew and Geoffrey Owen.Gender Segregation and Social Change: Men and Women in Changing Labour Markets, edited by Alison MacEwen Scott.Skill and Occupational Change, edited by Roger Penn, Michael Rose and Jill Rubery.The Future of the Trade Unions, by Robert Taylor. AndrC Deutsch,The Dynamics of Workplace Unionism: Shop Stewards' Organization in Three Merseyside Plants, by Ralph Darlington.Enterprise without Unions: Industrial Relations in the Non‐union Firm, by Ian McLoughlin and Stephen Gourlay.Trade Unions in Britain Today, 2nd ed, by John McIlroy.Strategic Negotiations: A Theory of Change in Labor‐Management Relations, by Richard E. Walton, Joel Cutcher‐Gershenfeld and Robert B. McKersie.Management in China during the Age of Reform, by John Child.