Christopher Pissarides

Sir Christopher Pissarides is the 2010 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, the Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and the Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus. He is a macroeconomist who specialises in the economics of labour markets, economic growth and structural change, especially as they relate to obstacles to free-market clearing. He has published extensively in academic journals and his book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory is a standard reference in the academic literature on unemployment, which has influenced extensively labour market policies. He has received several prizes, awards and prestigious Academy fellowships for his work, including the Grand Cross of the Republic of Cyprus and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

In the last decade he has mainly worked on the employment implications of automation and artificial intelligence and on the emergence of China as a global economic power. He has recently been involved in the preparation of a Report on the development of the Greek economy, which bears his name, and through his position as Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work in London he is actively involved in securing the conditions for the creation of good work in the age of automation.

Born in Cyprus, Pissarides moved to Britain to study economics at the University of Essex and the London School of Economics. In 2005, he became the first European economist to be awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, which he shared with his American collaborator Dale Mortensen. From 2000 to 2007, he was an external member of the Cyprus Monetary Policy Committee, which successfully saw the introduction of the euro to that country. He has served on the influential European Employment Task Force and has been a consultant on employment policy and other labor issues for the World Bank, the European Commission, the Bank of England, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In 2011, he received the Grand Cross of the Republic of Cyprus, the nation's highest honor, and served as president of the European Economic Association. Other honors include fellowships with the British Academy, the Academy of Athens, the Academy of Europe, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economists, and others. He is also a lifetime honorary member of the American Economic Association and holds honorary doctorate degrees from several universities, including the University of Essex, the Athens University of Economics, and the University of Cyprus.

Pissarides has had yearlong visits at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of California-Berkeley. He frequently visits the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he holds the title of Helmut and Anna Pao Sohmen Professor-at-Large at the Institute of Advanced Studies.