Happiness
This house believes that new measures of economic and social progress are needed for the 21st-century economy.
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Representing the sides
- Richard Layard
RICHARD LAYARD
Emeritus Professor of Economics, London School of EconomicsRichard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and was the founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He now heads the Centre's Programme on Well-Being. As a member of the House of Lords, he is a keen advocate of making people's subjective well-being a government objective. As a labour economist, he was an early advocate of the welfare-to-work approach to European unemployment. In 2008 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labour Economics. The second edition of his book "Happiness—Lessons from a New Science", published in April, includes a new part in which he responds to critics and clarifies his argument. He advises the government on mental health policy and devised the policy "Improving Access to Psychological Therapy", and is joint co-ordinator of the Local Well-Being. With Geoff Mulgan and Anthony Seldon, he launched in April Action for Happiness, a mass movement to create a happier society.
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- Paul Ormerod PAUL ORMEROD
Economist and author, "The Death of Economics"Paul Ormerod is an economist. He is Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, and is well known as a leading critic of orthodox economics and free-market policies. He is the author of three best-selling books: "The Death of Economics", "Butterfly Economics" and "Why Most Things Fail", which was a Business Week US Business Book of the Year.
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Background reading
Economics focus: The joyless or the jobless
The idea of progress: Onwards and upwards
Affluence: Happiness (and how to measure it)
Happiness and economics: Economics discovers its feelings
Standards of living: Beyond GDP
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