Sir Christopher A Pissarides

2010 Nobel Laureate in Economics Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics

Sir Christopher Pissarides is the Regius Professor of Economics at the London
School of Economics, the Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus
and the IAS Helmut & Anna Pao Sohmen Professor-at-Large at the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology. He also holds the position of Chairman of
the Council of National Economy of the Republic of Cyprus on a voluntary basis.
He was educated at the University of Essex and the London School of Economics
(LSE), and he spent the bulk of his career at the LSE. He had long visits in the US
Universities of Harvard, Princeton and California at Berkeley.
Sir Christopher specialises in the economics of labour markets, monetary and
fiscal policy, economic growth and structural change. He was awarded the
2010 Nobel Prize in Economics, jointly with Dale Mortensen of Northwestern
University and Peter Diamond of MIT, for his work on markets with frictions.
The emphasis of his work has been the labour market and the theory and policy
related to unemployment. Prior to that, in 2005, he became the first European
economist to win the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, sharing it again with
his collaborator Dale Mortensen. He has written extensively in professional
journals, magazines and the press and his book Equilibrium Unemployment
Theory is an influential reference in the economics of unemployment that has
been translated into many languages.
He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Athens,
the Academia Europaea and several other learned societies, and he is a
Lifetime Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. He
has been honoured by several universities worldwide with doctorates or
professorships. His other honours include the Grand Cross of the Republic
of Cyprus (2011), the Trinity College Historical Society Gold Medal for
Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse (2012) and the Kiel Institute
Global Economy Prize (2015). In 2011 he was elected honorary citizen of his
birthplace Nicosia. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.
In 2011 he served as the President of the European Economic Association.
Between 2000 and 2007 he was the external member of the Monetary
Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Cyprus, which brought the euro
to Cyprus. In the past he worked on consultancy projects for the European
Commission, World Bank and OECD on matters related to employment and
macroeconomic policy. More recently he has worked on the economics of the
euro area and the European Union and he is frequently quoted in the press on
issues concerning European labour markets, the problems of the euro area and
Greece in particular and the future of European integration.