<img class="size-full wp-image-517 alignleft" alt="Prof Pissarides" src="http://www.thoughtforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Prof-Pissarides.jpeg" width="200" height="299" />Christopher Pissarides is School Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics. He is the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, awarded jointly to him and Peter Diamond of MIT and Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University, for their work on "markets with friction".

Christopher's areas of specialization are the economics of labour markets and the employment implications of economic fluctuations, growth and structural change. He also researches monetary and fiscal policy, especially as they relate to European integration and the problems of the Eurozone. He has written extensively in professional journals and his book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory is an influential reference in the economics of unemployment and has been translated in many languages. Other recent writings include papers on the British, European and other OECD countries' economies.

Christopher was born in Cyprus, where he received his first education, but subsequently moved to Britain to study economics at the University of Essex and LSE. He spent the bulk of his career at the LSE, where he is still Professor, but also had year-long visits in the US Universities of Harvard, Princeton and California at Berkeley. He currently spends part of his time at the University of Cyprus, where he has the title of Laiki Professor of European Studies and visits frequently the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he holds the title of Helmut &amp; Anna Pao Sohmen Professor-at-Large at the Institute of Advanced Studies.

In 2005 Christopher became the first European economist to be awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, sharing it with his American collaborator Dale Mortensen. In 2011 he received the Grand Cross of the Republic of Cyprus, the highest honour of the Republic. He served as the President of the European Economic Association in the same year. Others honours include Fellowships of the British Academy, the Academy of Athens, the Academia Europaea, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economics 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.

In 2000-07 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 (2003) and he has been a consultant on employment policy and other labour issues for the World Bank, the European Commission, the Bank of England and the OECD.

(For more information on Professor Pissarides please visit his personal <a href="http://christopherpissarides.com/">website</a>)

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