In honour of Lord Richard Layard's anniversary!

In September Lord Richard Layard, the ICEF co-founder and Emeritus Professor of LSE, made a speech at the ICEF Graduation Ceremony 2014 which took place in the Moscow Residence of British Ambassador. This year Richard had his 80^th Anniversary and the 50^th Anniversary of his career at the LSE. In honour of this we publish here some abstracts from his speech.

On the 11th of December in honour of Richard Layard's achievements LSE hosted a celebratory conference featuring a wealth of high profile speakers. These guests have known and worked with Richard extensively over the years and joined together to discuss the key economic matters that have been the cornerstones of his research career, namely; Unemployment; Inequality; Human Capital and; Happiness and Wellbeing.

Short biography: Richard has experienced the LSE from all perspectives. Firstly, as a student - receiving his Masters in 1967, then as Lecturer, Reader and Professor. He has been an integral part of the research programme at the LSE, working in the Higher Education Research Unit, the Centre for Labour Economics and as Founder-Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, where he is now the Director of the Wellbeing Programme. His influence in public policy is far reaching too. Richard advocated many of the policies which characterised the New Labour government, particularly the New Deal, and in 2000, he was made a Labour life peer in the House of Lords. He has worked as an advisor for numerous organisations and government institutions both in the UK and internationally, bringing forward policies on Skills and Apprenticeships and Mental Health.

Richard's speech on the Graduation Ceremony:

I would like to begin by congratulating all of you on a very good decision to go to ICEF and also of course on your success at the end of your course. I think that progress of ICEF has been quite extraordinary from the situation where it didn’t exist 17 years ago to now, when it is the best undergraduate economics programme in Russia and has a really fine international faculty. This is an extraordinary achievement. Your results are amazing. My really warm congratulations to all of you!

I can’t help saying that nearly all of this, the fact that this exists at all is due to one man almost entirely - Sergei Yakovlev. In 1993 I was in his office and he said to me “can you help us to reform the economic education in Russia?” so I then immediately took up his telephone in his office and I rang my friend Richard Jackman, who immediately said, as he always does, that he is very willing to help. That has been the most wonderful collaboration between him and Sergei and Oleg Zamkov and that is really what has determined the whole form and success of the college.

And the first Russian that I have met was in Hungary in Sopron at a conference in 1990 and this was Alexander Shokhin, who had impact on me immediately. He very nicely invited me to come and work in Russia with him and the Russian Government. And it was of course a quite extraordinary experience.

Great things have been achieved in Russia. Some mistakes, but I always thought that the Russian economy would do well and prosper. With a colleague I wrote a book and we called it “The coming Russian Boom”, this was 1996. People laughed at that time. And I said (I thought I would really go out on a limb), that the Russian economy will be growing at 5 percent per annum for at least 10 years from that time to 2000. In fact, I think it was 7 or 8 percent. People in the West underestimated Russia greatly. And it is wonderful what the Russian economy has done. I think that this really is because Russia is and always has been a major European country: it has European culture, it is one of the main contributors to European culture, and it has a European mentality. And this is why it has prospered so much. I do believe that in the end it will become a situation where Russia is simply a member of the great European community, I honestly hope that it will be like that.

But in any case we have a major international college, international faculty, a real European institution. And I just want to end by saying that I am really pleased that this is a college of economics as well as finance, because the aim of economics is not mainly to help people to make money, but to help people to understand the world and to be able to make it better. And economics is a main tool - I have got interested in psychology recently - economics with psychology are the main tools which can be used to think about the huge issues, about the future of Russia.

I hope some of you will engage in the huge issues of shaping Russia through the process of public policy as well as through participating in the economy.

So congratulations to all of you, it’s a great achievement. I’m glad you studied a wonderful subject, and I hope it will send you and your country in good state in your future life!