RICHARD LAYARD is Director of the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance. He has worked for many years on the problems of unemployment and inflation and is co-author of the influential book Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. In 1985 he founded the Employment Institute and was its Chairman from 1987-92. During the 1970s he worked on income distribution, co-authoring The Causes of Poverty for the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and was a part-time consultant to the Treasury. During the 1980s he was chairman of the European Commission's Macroeconomics Policy Group, and then co-chairman of the World Economy Group set up by the UN University. He was a member of the Commission on Public Policy and British Business whose report Promoting Prosperity was published in 1997. Following the General Election of 1997, he has worked as a consultant to the Department of Education and Employment.

In November 1991 Yegor Gaidar invited him to become an adviser to the Russian government's economic staff. He has acted in that capacity ever since and heads a team of 3 Westerners and 3 Russians working in Moscow with the economic staff of the government. The team produces Russian Economic Trends, a comprehensive monthly review of the Russian economy.