Sir Christopher Pissarides

Sir Christopher Pissarides is 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 policy, where his work has been especially influential. In the last decade he has worked extensively on the employment implications of new technology, automation, economic growth and the structural transformation, and in the economics of the Eurozone and the emergence of China as a global economic power. He is a regular keynote speaker on these topics in Europe, China and elsewhere. He has published several books and has written extensively in professional journals, magazines and the press, on topics that include the European debt crisis and European integration, structural reforms and the future of work. In 2020 he chaired a committee which produced a development plan for Greece, which bears his name, and which has been used by the government to draft the next phase of reforms for the Greek economy. In London he is co-founder and Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, a charity that is actively involved in securing the conditions for the creation of good work in the age of automation. Sir Christopher has been awarded several honours for his work, most notably the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics, jointly with Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University and Peter Diamond of MIT. Prior to that, in 2005, he became one of the first economists worldwide to win the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, sharing it again with his collaborator Dale Mortensen. He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Athens, the Academia Europaea and several other learned societies, and he is a Lifetime Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. He has been honoured by several universities worldwide with honorary doctorates or professorships. His other awards include the Grand Cross of the Republic of Cyprus (2011), the Trinity College Historical Society Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse (2012) and the Kiel Institute Global Economy Prize (2015). In 2011 he was elected honorary citizen of his birthplace Nicosia. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.