Sir Christopher Pissarides

Professor, London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE); 2010 Nobel Laureate in Economics Scholars

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 specialises in the economics of labour markets, economic growth and structural change, especially the labour market at the macroeconomic level and the theory and policy related to unemployment.  In the last decade, he has worked extensively on the employment implications of new technology, economic growth and the structural transformation, the economics of the Eurozone and the emergence of China as a global economic power. 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 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. Prior to that, in 2005, he became one of the first economists worldwide to win the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, sharing it again with his collaborator Dale Mortensen. 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.