Cypriots recognised in the Queen’s Birthday honours list were Professor Pissarides for services to Economics, and Andrew Nicolaou. Formerly chief executive Officer, HSBC Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Colombo, Sri Lanka. For services to promoting British business interests, arts, education and the English language in Sri Lanka.
Christopher Pissarides is School Professor of Economics and Political Science at the London School of Economics and Chair of Council of National Economy, Republic of Cyprus. 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 & Anna Pao Sohmen Professor-at-Large at the Institute of Advanced Studies.
