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Compares Layard, Nickell and Jackman′s empirical model of UK unemployment with other time‐series econometric studies to assess whether the balance of evidence supports their analysis. Compares estimates of the effect on the UK NAIRU of factors such as benefits, union strength, mismatch, taxes, the exchange rate and hysteresis. Highlights and discusses differences of approach – e.g. to the exogeneity of the real exchange rate, the permanence of wedge effects and to hysteresis. Empirical results are found to be very sensitive to the precise way in which models are formulated and estimated. This suggests that any estimates of the level of the NAIRU are likely to be unreliable. Finds however, considerable empirical support for the kind of interactions between wages, prices and unemployment that Layard, Nickell and Jackman include in their model.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the twenty-first century reach and impact of “happiness” work by one individual (Professor Lord Richard Layard).

The author approaches his work as a public health case study, with the caveat that the author knew this “Case” personally, which could influence the author’s assessment.

During 2005-2018, Richard Layard stimulated discussion of “happiness” as a field of study. This field now has global relevance to mental health, although its relationship to practice for population health is still debated.

Layard’s ideas are behind many initiatives, such as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies.

The analysis of the processes determining unemployment in an open economy has been considerably advanced by the work of Layard, Nickell and Jackman in their book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. Reviews their contribution. They have developed an analysis based on the role of the “wedge” between the producer and consumer wages. This wedge depends, in part, on the real exchange rate. A change in the wedge may change the bargain between unions and employers. If it does, then a change in the real exchange rate may change the equilibrium level of unemployment. It is frequently claimed that this is, indeed, the case. Argues that the theoretical and empirical support for this proposition is rather weak.

The recent focus on improving access to psychological therapies led by Richard Layard has generated wide‐scale debate. This article looks at this debate and the potential long‐term implications of Layard's recommendations.

Considers the treatment of openness and imperfect competition in the influential analysis of Layard, Nickell and Jackman′s (LNJ′s) Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. Clarifies and completes LNJ′s treatment of openness through the provision of explicit analytical solutions to their model under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. Also provides a (largely informal) analysis of the sensitivity of the LNJ model′s results to the particular forms of imperfect competition assumed. It is argued that openness is crucial to the model′s properties, whereas imperfect competition is not. However, imperfect competitive behaviour may, more generally, have a major impact if it is not confined to the “well‐behaved form” allowed by LNJ.

Updates the Layard and Nickell union mark‐up variable to provide annual estimates up to 1991. Explains changes over time in this variable by reference to, amongst other things, legislative changes. Also provides regional estimates of the Layard and Nickell mismatch index.

Assesses the NAIRU framework for analysing the determinants of equilibrium unemployment, as expressed in Layard, Nickell and Jackman′s Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. It is argued that the NAIRU has produced many useful insights regarding the effects of socio‐economic factors on wage determination, but has not produced a plausible account of the determination of equilibrium unemployment.

Two years ago, we published within this journal a scoping article (Turpin et al, 2006) concerning the urgent need to review and enhance the workforce responsible for delivering psychological therapies to people seeking help for common mental health problems in primary care (London School of Economics, 2006). We estimated that the demand for such interventions, the service models that might deliver increased capacity for psychological treatments, the implications for workforce numbers and the impact that this would have on education and training. Much of the thinking that was adopted within the review was based on current development work around the mental health workforce led by the National Workforce Programme sponsored by the National Institute for Mental Health England (NIMHE) on New Ways of Working (NWW).The current paper reflects on the process and the added value that NWW has contributed to what is a radical new venture, which has been described by the lead evaluator of the pilot Improving Access for Psychological Therapies (IAPT) phase, Professor Glenys Parry, as 'the industrialisation of psychological therapies'. More specifically, it reviews the implementation of a national programme designated as IAPT, which was commissioned on the basis of the NWW work, and the evidence accrued from the IAPT national demonstration sites at Doncaster and Newham, together with the efforts of Lord Layard and the New Savoy Partnership.The first year implementation of IAPT is described, together with the lessons learned from the roll out. As the programme has developed, it has become important to ensure that clients also have a choice of evidence‐based interventions. NWW has provided a means to help practitioners come together from a range of therapeutic orientations and professions to contribute to this more diverse workforce. Finally, it is argued that NWW has been instrumental in helping managers and professions alike think more flexibly about service models and provision, and how to develop a new workforce competent to deliver such an innovative service.

This paper aims to ground Harvey’s (2003) top-down theory of “accumulation by dispossession” in the everyday lives of people and places with specific focus on the role of law. It does this by drawing upon the lived experiences of residents on a public housing estate in England (UK) undergoing regeneration and gentrification through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

Members of the residents association on the Myatts Field North estate, London, were engaged as action research partners, working with the researchers to collect empirical data through surveys of their neighbours, organising community events and being formally interviewed themselves. Their experiential knowledge was supplemented with an extensive review of all associated policy, planning, legal and contractual documentation, some of which was disclosed in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Three specific forms of place-based dispossession were identified: the loss of consumer rights, the forcible acquisition of homes and the erasure of place identity through the estate’s rebranding. Layard’s (2010) concept of the “law of place” was shown to be broadly applicable in capturing how legal frameworks assist in enacting accumulation by dispossession in people’s lives. Equally important is the ideological power of law as a discursive practice that ultimately undermines resistance to apparent injustices.

This paper develops Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession in conversation with legal geography scholarship. It shows – via the Myatts Field North estate case study – how PFI, as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession in the abstract, enacts dispossession in the concrete, assisted by the place-making and ideological power of law.

We present a dynamic model of real wages in the open economy that encapsulates the well‐known “competing claims model” or “incomplete competition model” of real wage determination. In general, the model determines the development of inflation, real wages and the real exchange rate for any given rate of unemployment. Inflation, rather than unemployment, is the “conflict solver” in the unrestricted model. However, a supply side determined equilibrium rate of unemployment is subsumed as a special case. A re‐appraisal of the empirical literature shows that there is little evidence in support of the “natural rate” restrictions.