Rankings / Candidate
Richard Layard
London School of Economics · Behavioral
Photo: Andy Miah, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Currently #11, tier Field, score 14.3, named by 1 source.Score history: 100.0, 25.0, 14.3
The work. Layard argued that governments should measure and maximize well-being directly rather than income, then went and did it. His lobbying built Britain's national talking therapies program and got well-being into official statistics.
The case for. Happiness economics went from fringe to policy agenda in twenty years, and he is its most effective evangelist.
The case against. He is 92. The field's founder, Richard Easterlin, died in 2024, and the committee has never treated subjective well-being as a result rather than a survey.
The KmikeyM angle. Layard's question is what a society should actually maximize. KmikeyM shareholders face the same choice every vote: the share price, or the man.
What the sources say
- Clarivate alumni (prior years) named Richard Layard: named in 2022: for contributions to the economics of happiness and subjective well-being (heat 100) Preseason: the Clarivate alumni pool