Sir Christopher Pissarides is Professor of economics at LSE and holder of the Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics. He is also a fellow of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE and of the Centre for Economic Policy Research as well as a Professor at the University of Cyprus. He specialises in the economics of unemployment, labour-market theory, labour-market policy and more recently he has written about growth and structural change. He has written extensively in professional journals and his book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, now in its second edition, is a standard reference in the economics of unemployment. In 2009 he served as Vice-President of the European Economic Association, to become president in 2011. Professor Pissarides was awarded his PhD at LSE in 1973 and has been on the faculty since. He is an elected fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association and the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a member of Council of the European Economic Association and the Econometric Society and a former member of Council of the Royal Economic Society. In 2005 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics (jointly with Dale Mortensen) for his work on unemployment and in 2008 he received the Republic of Cyprus “Aristeion” for the Arts, Literature and Science. Professor Pissarides was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2010, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen for their work on the economics of unemployment, especially job flows and the effects of being out of work.