Christopher Pissarides
Vacancies and unemployment coexist even in growing economies, and most workforce strategies have no rigorous model for why. The mismatch between available work and employed workers is structural, rooted in search frictions that standard hiring logic does not account for. Automation and AI are accelerating job creation and destruction at the same time, introducing new versions of those frictions faster than institutions – or organisations – can adapt.
Labour markets malfunction structurally – even in growth periods – and Sir Christopher Pissarides, 2010 Nobel laureate in Economics and Regius Professor at the London School of Economics, is the economist who built the defining analytical framework for why, now extended to what automation will do to work.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Sir Christopher Pissarides
- The Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model – the standard tool used by central banks and governments to analyse unemployment and wage formation – means his analysis carries a precision and institutional grounding that macroeconomic commentary cannot match.
- His Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a Nuffield Foundation-funded programme conducted with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School, converts macroeconomic research into concrete, evidence-based frameworks for managing workforce disruption from automation.
- Forty years of advisory work for the World Bank, European Commission, OECD, and Bank of England means audiences receive analysis that has already shaped the policy environment they operate in – not analysis that describes it from the outside.
- His position as co-developer of the most cited model in labour economics, and former chair of a national economy council during a financial crisis, enables board-level conversations that translate structural theory directly into strategic workforce decisions.
- His analysis of AI and automation extends the search-frictions framework behind his Nobel Prize – it is not speculative commentary, but a rigorous continuation of four decades of original research applied to a new generation of technological disruption.
Biography highlights
- Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2010, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen, for “analysis of markets with search frictions”
- Regius Professor of Economics, London School of Economics – faculty member since 1976; former Head of the Economics Department
- Co-developer of the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) model – the standard global tool for analysing unemployment, wage formation, and labour market policy
- Author of Equilibrium Unemployment Theory (MIT Press) – the standard reference in labour economics
- Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Institute for the Future of Work (2018); led the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a £1.8m Nuffield Foundation-funded programme with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School
- Knighted 2013 for services to economics; IZA Prize in Labor Economics 2005; Fellow of the British Academy, Econometric Society, and American Economic Association; adviser to the World Bank, European Commission, OECD, and Bank of England
Biography
The Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model is the standard analytical framework for understanding unemployment. Sir Christopher Pissarides co-built it at the London School of Economics, where he has been on the faculty since 1976. He received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the work, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen.
The model’s core claim is that labour markets are governed by frictions. Workers and vacancies do not find each other efficiently. Search costs, information gaps, and institutional design create persistent mismatches that no increase in job openings can resolve on its own. This structural view of unemployment is the one that central banks, the World Bank, and the European Commission reach for when they need precision rather than commentary.
Pissarides co-founded the Institute for the Future of Work in 2018 and led the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, a Nuffield Foundation-funded programme conducted with Imperial College London and Warwick Business School. The Review applies his frictions framework to automation and AI, producing evidence on how technological disruption creates new mismatches and what organisations and governments must do to manage them.
His advisory record spans the World Bank, the European Commission, the OECD, and the Bank of England. He chaired the National Economy Council of the Republic of Cyprus during its financial crisis. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, and the American Economic Association. For boards and leadership teams working through structural workforce questions, his analysis carries a weight that secondary interpretation of the same data cannot replicate.
Key speaking topics
- Labour market economics and unemployment theory
- Search frictions and job matching
- Automation, AI, and the future of work
- Workforce disruption and structural economic change
- Employment policy and institutional design
- Economic growth and structural transformation
- Worker wellbeing and productivity
Ideal for
- Boards and C-suite leadership navigating long-term workforce and employment strategy
- Policymakers, finance ministries, and government economic advisers
- Chief Human Resources Officers and HR leadership teams grappling with automation and structural workforce change
- Economic and business conferences addressing labour markets, growth, or the workforce consequences of technology
Audience outcomes
- A structural model for why labour markets underperform that goes beyond cyclical explanations
- Analytical tools for assessing how automation and AI will affect workforce composition in specific sectors or regions
- A framework for distinguishing cyclical workforce disruption from structural change that requires institutional response
- Policy context for decisions on hiring, reskilling, and workforce investment
- Clarity on how technological change distributes economic gains and losses – and what factors determine which outcome prevails
Talks
Uses the structural theory of labour market frictions to explain why unemployment persists, why standard employment interventions often underdeliver, and what rigorous labour market analysis reveals about the choices available to policymakers and organisations.
Key takeaways:
- Why unemployment and vacancies coexist simultaneously, and what the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model reveals about the mechanics of labour market failure
- How institutional choices – job protection legislation, unemployment benefits, and hiring mechanisms – shape employment outcomes in ways that aggregate hiring data does not capture
- What distinguishes employment policies with a credible evidence base from those that address symptoms rather than structural causes
Based on the TEDxBrussels address, this talk examines the structural shifts reshaping European labour markets and what organisations and governments need to do to prepare for them.
Key takeaways:
- How European labour markets are structurally distinct – and why those differences determine how automation and demographic change will play out differently across regions
- The evidence on simultaneous job creation and destruction in a technology-driven economy, and what it means for long-term workforce strategy
- What a credible, evidence-based future-of-work agenda looks like for organisations operating across complex and varied regulatory environments
Based on the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing, this talk examines how automation technologies are reshaping both worker productivity and worker wellbeing – and why organisations that neglect the second will fail to achieve the first.
Key takeaways:
- Why many automation deployments have reduced rather than improved the quality of working life, and what the evidence shows distinguishes the organisations that have avoided this outcome
- The structural conditions – digital infrastructure, human capital investment, and institutional quality – that allow AI to raise productivity sustainably rather than simply redistributing costs onto workers
- A framework for human-centred automation: what workers need from organisations as AI is integrated into work design, and why this is a strategic question rather than a welfare one