London School of Economics (LSE) Professor Christopher Antoniou Pissarides, of Cypriot descent, has been awarded, along with two Americans, Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen a Nobel Prize in economic science for his work in the "analysis of markets with search frictions".
London based Professor Pissarides, has been one of the star faculty members at the LSE for many years. The three winners were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on the efficiency of recruitment and wage formation as well as labor-market regulation. The laureates “have formulated a theoretical framework for search markets,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. “Peter Diamond has analyzed the foundations of search markets. Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides have expanded the theory and have applied it to the labor market. The laureates’ models help us understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies, and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy.”
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1948, Professor Pissarides, graduated from the Pancyprian Gymnasium, and then went to the University of Essex for his BA and MA in economics. The LSE beckoned in 1973 where he received his PhD in Economics under the supervision of the mathematical economist Michio Morishima. In February 1974, he went back to Cyprus to work for the country’ Central Bank.
The Turkish invasion, July of the same year, made him to change his plans and he returned to England where he got his first job at the University of Southampton. Since 1976, he belongs to the faculty of LSE. He currently holds the Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics at the Economics Department and is Director of the Research Programme on Macroeconomics at the Centre for Economic Performance, both at the London School of Economics.
Speaking from his north London home, Pissarides told The Associated Press the announcement came as "a complete surprise" though his work had already helped shape thinking on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, the New Deal for Young People, a British government initiative aimed at getting 18-24-year-olds back on the job market after long spells of unemployment, "is very much based on our work," he said. "One of the key things we found is that it is important to make sure that people do not stay unemployed too long so they don't lose their feel for the labor force," Pissarides told reporters in London. "The ways of dealing with this need not be expensive training. It could be as simple as providing work experience."
