Christopher A. Pissarides

Sir Christopher Antoniou Pissarides (; ; born 20 February 1948 ) is a Cypriot economist. He is Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus. His research focuses on macroeconomics, labour economics, economic growth, and economic policy. In 2010 he received the Nobel Prize in Economics along with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen, "for their analysis of markets with theory of search frictions."

Early life

Pissarides was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, into a Greek Orthodox family from the village of Agros. He first studied at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in Nicosia.

Career

Pissarides is Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he has taught since 1976. He is chairman of the Centre for Macroeconomics, which deploys economists from the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the University College London, the Bank of England, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

He has held a lectureship at the University of Southampton (1974–76), and visiting professorships at Harvard University (1979–80) and the University of California, Berkeley (1990–91).

In February 2020, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appointed Pissarides to the chairmanship of a committee tasked with drafting a long-term growth strategy for the country. Since September 2020 he has been chairman of the economic council of EuroAfrica Interconnector.

In June 2021, it was announced that he would lead a review into the future of work and wellbeing, a three-year collaboration between the Institute for the Future of Work, Imperial College London, and Warwick Business School, funded by a £1.8 million grant from the Nuffield Foundation. The Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing was launched in March 2022.

Academic contributions One of Pissarides' papers, "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment" (with Dale Mortensen), was published in the Review of Economic Studies in 1994. He has also written the book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, a study of the macroeconomics of unemployment.

Awards and honours

Fellow of the Econometric Society, 1997 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, 2011 Vice-president of the European Economic Association, President in 2011 Nobel Prize in Economics in 2010, jointly with Dale Mortensen, Peter A. Diamond, The College Historical Society of Trinity College Dublin awarded Pissarides its Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse in 2012 In 2013, Knighted in the 2013 Birthday Honours for "services to economics." Member of the Academy of Athens, 2015 Honorary Doctorate from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2025.

Selected works

Description and chapter-preview links.