John F. Helliwell

John F. Helliwell (born August 15, 1937) is a Canadian economist,^[1] professor emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia.^[2] senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and co-director of the CIFAR Programme on Social Interactions, Identity, and Well-Being;^[3][4] Board Director of the International Positive Psychology Association,^[5] and editor of the World Happiness Report.

Helliwell's early research heavily focused on developing national and global econometric models for studying national economies and their international linkages, including integrating energy considerations into models, for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),^[6] Bank of Canada, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and the International Project Link,^[7] the latter led by Nobel Laureate, Lawrence Klein. (For a history of how central banks, and especially the Bank of Canada, developed macro econometric models in the 1960s and 1970s, see the Bank of Canada Review publication From Flapper to Bluestocking: What Happened to the Young Woman of Wellington Street?^[8]).

During his tenure at Harvard from 1991 to 1996 as a Mackenzie King Chair of Canadian Studies between 1991 and 1994, and Fulbright Fellow and chair of the Canada Seminar 1995–1996,^[9] he conducted research in collaboration with Robert Putnam in the study of social capital as a measure of the social linkages that help communities to operate effectively. This work lead to research into using measures of subjective well-being to provide a broader way of measuring human progress. Helliwell subsequently collaborated with other researchers in the emerging field, including Robert Putnam, Ed Diener, Daniel Kahneman, Richard Layard, and a wide variety of other researchers and practitioners. The World Happiness Report grew out of a conference in Thimphu chaired by past Bhutanese Prime Minister Thinley and Jeffrey Sachs, held pursuant to the United Nations' June 2011 General Assembly Resolution 65/309, Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development,^[10] introduced by Bhutan, and in preparation for, and support of, the subsequent High Level Meeting at the United Nations' headquarters in New York City called Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm^[11] held on April 2, 2012.