Using Subjective Wellbeing Data in Benefit-Cost Analysis

SBCA Professional Development Workshop
May 13 & 14, 2026 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. ET

There is a growing demand for governments, businesses, and NGOs to make people and their wellbeing the goal of policy, as evidenced by recent calls from the OECD and the European Commission, as well as various initiatives around the world. The UK and New Zealand Treasuries now allow the use of wellbeing data to capture benefits in benefit-cost analyses, based on so-called Wellbeing-Years (WELLBYs), at an equal footing with conventional willingness-to-pay. Other countries around the world are following suit.

In this workshop, you will be introduced to the fundamental of the new science of wellbeing, including wellbeing as a novel measure of welfare and benefit and its different conceptualisations such as evaluations and experiences; wellbeing theories and frameworks; data, measurement, and survey design; and behavioural scientific phenomena uniquely captured by wellbeing data such as adaptation to changing life circumstances, which have clear implications for welfare. You will then learn how to apply these insights in benefit-cost analysis, using official UK guidelines as an example. Throughout this workshop, we will use examples from a wide range of benefit-cost analyses across policy domains, based on our forthcoming book Value For Money. The New Cost-Benefit Analysis Targeting Wellbeing, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2026. The speakers are all co-authors of this book.

 

Instructors

Lord Richard Layard. Richard Layard is the Founder Director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics – one of Europe’s leading interdisciplinary research centres. His economic career began in labour economics and in 1972 he published Cost Benefit Analysis, a leading textbook on the subject – revised and re-released in 1994. In more recent years, his focus has been on encouraging policy-makers and organisations to adopt wellbeing as the goal for society. He has written and co-authored several books on this, most notably Happiness: Lessons From a New Science (2005), which has been translated into 19 languages, The Origins of Happiness (2018), and the first textbook on the subject, Wellbeing: Science and Policy (2023). Most recently, using the new science of wellbeing, Richard and colleagues have been using Wellbeing-Years (WELLBYs) to assess the benefit-cost ratios of policies that could not previously be evaluated in traditional monetary terms. Their methods are now incorporated in the UK Treasury Green Book on policy appraisal.

 

Christian Krekel. Dr Christian Krekel is Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. He is Co-Director of the Wellbeing Programme at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), one of Europe’s leading economic research centres, as well as Research Affiliate at LSE’s Behavioural Research Lab and LSE’s Data Science Institute.

Christian is an applied economist: his fields are behavioural economics, health, and wellbeing; behavioural welfare economics; policy appraisal and evaluation; and applied microeconomics. He obtained his PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics.

In his work, Christian looks at policies and interventions to improve people’s lives – specifically their behaviour, health, and (ultimately) their wellbeing. Recent examples include the evaluation of a nationwide mental health service in England (NHS Talking Therapies); estimating the causal effects of volunteering in the NHS (and Care) Volunteer Responders programmes on happiness, mental health, trust, and pro-sociality; nature exposure (including urban green spaces) and its impact on wellbeing, mental health, and pro-environmental behaviour; or estimating the social value generated by the 2012 London Olympics or the London Marathon. His work aims at informing evidenced-based policy on how to improve these outcomes in a cost-effective way.

Christian has published in top-tier economics journals, such as The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, or Journal of Health Economics, as well as in leading interdisciplinary outlets, such as Social Science & Medicine or The BMJ. His work has featured extensively in the media, including The Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, or Forbes, as well as on broadcast, including BBC News and BBC Radio 3.

Christian is a frequent advisor to international organisations such as the World Bank or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He also advises national governments such as the UK or New Zealand on how to use wellbeing data for policy appraisal and evaluation, as well as businesses and NGOs on how to demonstrate the social impact and value of their work, on how to cultivate employee wellbeing, or on behavioural science more generally.

For his work, Christian has been awarded the Young Economist Award (FEEM Award) by the European Economic Association.

 

Sara MacLennan. Sara is a Policy Associate at the London School of Economics, working in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) on applying wellbeing data to the benefit-cost analysis of major government policies. Prior to this, Sara spent over 10 years in the UK Government Economic Service, where she authored the Wellbeing Guidance for Appraisal: Supplementary Green Book Guidance (2021), the official UK guidance for incorporating wellbeing data into policy appraisal. Sara was also Head of Evidence at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, where she worked with the leading academics in wellbeing economics to compile evidence on the determinants of wellbeing and supported UK government departments and arms-length bodies to incorporate wellbeing in policy analysis and development.

 

David Frayman. David Frayman is a Research Economist in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics. His research examines public policies in education, employment support, and health. He has delivered training to analysts across multiple UK government departments and public bodies, and his recent presentations include talks at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Department for Education, and Ofcom, among others.

 

 

Isaac Parkes. Isaac Parkes is a Research Assistant in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and a Research Associate in the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. He also teaches Happiness and Public Policy, a course on the MPP/MPA in the School of Public Policy, at the London School of Economics, joint with Richard Layard. His research to date includes the use of wellbeing measures for policy appraisal, exploration into the measurement of children’s wellbeing for use in policy, and investigation into the interpersonal incomparability of wellbeing scale responses.