Nationality Cypriot, British Name Christopher Pissarides | Role Economist Fields Labour economics | |
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Born 20 February 1948 (age 76) ( 1948-02-20 ) Nicosia, Cyprus Institution London School of Economics 1976–
University of Southampton 1974–76
University of Cyprus 2011–
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 2013– Alma mater London School of Economics
University of Essex Influences Michio Morishima
Dale Mortensen Contributions Macroeconomic Search and Matching Theories of Unemployment
Matching Function
Structural Growth Education London School of Economics and Political Science, University of Essex Awards Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, IZA Prize in Labor Economics Influenced by Michio Morishima, Dale T. Mortensen Books Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, Job Matching - Wage Dis, Labour Market Adjustme, Looking Into the Black Box, The Ins and Outs of European Similar People Dale T Mortensen, Peter Diamond, Tito Boeri, Jeffrey Frankel, Klaus F Zimmermann Profiles | ||
Interview with Christopher A. Pissarides
Sir Christopher Antoniou Pissarides FBA (Greek: Χριστόφορος Αντωνίου Πισσαρίδης; born 20 February 1948) is a British-Cypriot economist. He is the School Professor of Economics & Political Science and Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. His research interests focus on several 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 his contributions to the theory of search frictions and macroeconomics.
Contents
- Interview with Christopher A Pissarides
- Early life
- Career
- Academic contributions
- Awards and honours
- Selected works
- References
Early life
Pissarides was born in Nicosia, Cyprus into a Greek Orthodox family from the village of Agros.
He was educated at the Pancyprian Gymnasium in Nicosia. He received his B.A. in Economics in 1970 and his M.A. in Economics in 1971 at the University of Essex. He subsequently enrolled in the London School of Economics, where he received his PhD in Economics in 1973 under the supervision of the mathematical economist Michio Morishima for a thesis titled Individual behaviour in markets with imperfect information.
Career
He is Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics (where he has been since 1976) and Chair of the Centre for Macroeconomics.
He has held lectureship at the University of Southampton (1974–76), and visiting professorship at Harvard University (1979–80) and the University of California, Berkeley (1990–91).
Academic contributions
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.
Pissarides' most influential paper is arguably "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment" (with Dale Mortensen), published in the Review of Economic Studies in 1994. This paper built on the previous individual contributions that both authors had made in the previous two decades.
The Mortensen-Pissarides model that resulted from this paper has been exceptionally influential in modern macroeconomics. In one or another of its extensions or variations, today it is part of the core of most graduate economics curricula throughout the world.
Pissarides' 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 Pissarides' joint work with Mortensen, resulting in the analysis of both endogenous job creation and destruction.
Awards and honours
Pissarides was knighted in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to economics.