Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

by Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, Richard Jackman

Why has unemployment fallen in some countries and not in others? this book is now re-issued with an updated introduction, which shows how well the analysis explains recent developments. The book is both a textbook and an original monograph in which the authors set out their analytic framework which has now become standard in many countries. The book both explains unemployment and shows how it can be reduced. It contains a long overview chapter which is accessible to any non-specialist with an elementary knowledge of economics.

Genres: Economics

634 pages, Hardcover

First published December 5, 1991

About the author

Peter Richard Grenville Layard, Baron Layard FBA, is a British labour economist, currently working as programme director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

His early career focused on how to reduce unemployment and inequality. He was Senior Research Officer for the famous Robbins Committee on Higher Education. This committee's report led to the massive expansion of UK university education in the 1960s and 1970s.

Following research on happiness begun in the 1970s by economists such as Richard Easterlin at the University of Southern California, he has written about the economics of happiness, with one theme being the importance of non-income variables on aggregate happiness, including mental health.

His main current interest is how better mental health could improve our social and economic life. His work on mental health, including publishing The Depression Report in 2006, led to the establishment of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in England. He is co-editor of the World Happiness Report, with John F. Helliwell and Jeffrey Sachs.