Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

by Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, Richard dackman

Written by leading experts in the field, this book provides a broad survey of unemployment. Explaining what has happened to employment levels in the industrialized countries in the 1970s and 1980s, the authors discuss why unemployment is so high and why it has fluctuated so wildly, how unemployment affects inflation, and whether full employment can ever be combined with price stability. For each issue it develops a relevant theory, followed by extensive empirical analysis, drawing on material from both Europe and America.

Genres: Economics

Paperback

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.