Important Economists

Economists that Focus on Happiness in Economics

Richard Easterlin

"First economist to make prominant use of Happiness data" (from first website below)

article,Some uses of Happiness Data in Economics

article, Happiness and Economic Performance

Richard Layard

PICTURE

• Founder-director of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance
• focuses his writing on unemployment, inflation, inequality, education and post-Communist Reform
• 1997-2001-was a consultant to the Labour government
• 2005-published his book Happiness:Lessons from a New Science
• 1985-founded the Employment Institute
• 1980's-Chairman of the European Commission's Macroeconomic Policy Group
• Since 1964-member of the LSE staff

(information from http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/)
Happiness: Has Social Science a Clue?

• Lecture 1:
  • "To understand how the economy actually affects our well-being, we have to use psychology as well as economics"
  • "despite economic growth, happiness in the West has not grown in the last 50 years"
  • focuses on the underlying happiness
  • "In the standard economic model, private actions and exchanges get us to a Pareto optimum where no one could be happier without someone else being less happy"
  • "The higher the real wage, the happier the population"

Important Graphs! Richard Layard Lecture 1

Richard Layard Lecture 2

Richard Layard Lecture 3