Christopher A. Pissarides

Sir Christopher Pissarides
Born	(1948-02-20) 20 February 1948 (age 73)[1] Nicosia, Cyprus
Nationality	Cypriot
Citizenship	Cypriot, British
Institution	London School of Economics 1976–present University of Southampton 1974–76 University of Cyprus 2011–present[2] Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 2013–present[3]
Field	Labour economics
Alma mater	London School of Economics University of Essex
Doctoral advisor	Michio Morishima
Influences	Dale Mortensen
Contributions	Macroeconomic search and matching theories of unemployment, matching function, structural growth
Awards	IZA Prize in Labor Economics (2006) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2010)
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Sir Christopher Antoniou Pissarides FBA (/ˌpɪsəˈriːdiːz/; Greek: Χριστόφορος Αντωνίου Πισσαρίδης; born 20 February 1948^[1]) is a Cypriot economist. He is the School Professor of Economics & Political Science and Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus. His research focuses on topics of macroeconomics, notably labour, economic growth, and economic policy. In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, jointly with Peter A. Diamond and Dale Mortensen, "for their analysis of markets with theory of search frictions."^[4]

Early life[]

Pissarides was born in Nicosia, Cyprus,^[5] into a Greek Orthodox family from the village of Agros.^[6]

Pissarides was educated at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in Nicosia.^[6] He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Essex in 1970 and 1971, and a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics in 1973, under the supervision of the mathematical economist Michio Morishima for a thesis entitled "Individual behaviour in markets with imperfect information."^[7]

Career[]

Pissarides is Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he has been since 1976.^[8] 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.^[9]

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).^[5]

He served as the chairman of the National Economy Council of the Republic of Cyprus during the country's financial crisis in 2012 and resigned to focus on his academic work at the end of 2014. In 2018, in collaboration with Naomi Climer and Anna Thomas, he set up the charity Institute for the Future of Work in London, to promote the establishment of good jobs in the era of automation and artificial intelligence.^[10] On February 2020 Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis picked Pissarides to chair a committee tasked with drafting a long-term growth strategy for the country.^[11] From September 2020 he is chairman of the economic council of EuroAfrica Interconnector.^[12]

Academic contributions[]

This section is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (February 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

This section contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. Please remove or replace such wording and instead of making proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance. (February 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Pissarides is mostly known for his contributions to the search and matching theory for studying the interactions between the labour market and the macro economy. He helped develop the concept of the matching function (explaining the flows from unemployment to employment at a given moment of time), and pioneered the empirical work on its estimation. Pissarides has also done research on structural change and growth.

One of his most well-known papers is "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment" (with Dale Mortensen), published in the Review of Economic Studies in 1994.^[13] The paper was built on the previous individual contributions that both authors had made over the previous two decades.

The Mortensen–Pissarides model that resulted from the paper has been exceptionally influential in modern macroeconomics. In one or another of its extensions or variations, it is now part of the core of most graduate economics curricula throughout the world.

Pissarides's book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, a standard reference in the literature of the macroeconomics of unemployment, is now in its second edition and was revised after his joint work with Mortensen resulted in the analysis of both endogenous job creation and destruction.

Awards and honours[]

• Fellow of the Econometric Society, 1997^[7]
• Fellow of the British Academy, 2002^[7]
• Fellow of the European Economic Association, 2005
• IZA Prize in Labor Economics, jointly with Dale Mortensen, 2005^[14]
• 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,^[15] for "analysis of markets with search frictions"^[15][16]
• 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 year's Birthday Honours for "services to economics."^[17]
• Member of the Academy of Athens, 2015^[18]

Selected works[]

Nobel Prize laureates press conference at the KVA, 2010

• Pissarides, C. A. (1979). "Job Matchings with State Employment Agencies and Random Search". Economic Journal. 89 (356): 818–833. doi:10.2307/2231501. JSTOR 2231501.
• Pissarides, Christopher A. (1985). "Short-Run Equilibrium Dynamics of Unemployment, Vacancies, and Real Wages". American Economic Review. 75 (4): 676–690. JSTOR 1821347.
• Pissarides, Christopher; Layard, Richard; Hellwig, Martin (1986). "Unemployment and Vacancies in Britain". Economic Policy. 1 (3): 499–559. doi:10.2307/1344583. JSTOR 1344583.
• Mortensen, D. T.; Pissarides, C. A. (1994). (with Dale Mortensen). "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment". Review of Economic Studies. 61 (3): 397–415. doi:10.2307/2297896. JSTOR 2297896.
• Equilibrium Unemployment Theory (Second ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-262-16187-9. Description and chapter-preview links.
• Ngai, L. Rachel; Pissarides, Christopher A. (2007). (with L. Rachel Ngai). "Structural Change in a Multi-Sector Model of Growth" (PDF). American Economic Review. 97 (1): 429–443. doi:10.1257/aer.97.1.429. JSTOR 30034402. S2CID 14126725. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 July 2012.

References[]

External links[]

• Christopher A Pissarides personal page at London School of Economics
• Christopher Pissarides' personal website
• Christopher A. Pissarides on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel lecture on 8 December 2010 Equilibrium in the Labour Market with Search Frictions
• Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc
• Christopher Pissarides commemorative postage stamp issued from the Cyprus Post Office, 8 June 2011