Results

CentrePiece article

My must-read paper

Christopher Pissarides shares a body of research that has blended psychology with economics....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Skills in the age of AI

A focus on wellbeing at work can help employees thrive....Read more...

Chapter

Labour markets and the future of work

in The London Consensus

New technologies are causing a restructuring of labour markets in many countries. While much has been written on how these technologies may destroy jobs, this chapter argues that they do not threaten the end of work but ...Read more...

Journal article

International Economic Review:

Productive robots and industrial employment: the role of national innovation systems

In a model with robots, automatable and non-automatable production, we study robot-labor substitutions and show how they are influenced by a country's "innovation system". Substitution depends on demand and production el...Read more...

Blog

LSE IQ:

Podcast: What's it like to win a Nobel Prize?

Nobel Prizes and the "Nobel Prize in Economics", more accurately known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, are awarded every year in October. This month, the LSE IQ podcast sp...Read more...

Blog

Project Syndicate:

Should Workers Fear AI?

While hand-wringing about AI's implications for work and labour markets is understandable, economic history and current data make clear that the most common fears are largely overblown. Current applications are nowhere n...Read more...

External report

Old Skills, New Skills - what is changing in the UK labour market?

The UK, along with other industrial countries, is experiencing rapid technological change associated with robotics and artificial intelligence, precipitating significant transformations in terms of how work is organised,...Read more...

External report

Learning to grow: how to situate a skills strategy in an economic strategy

Investing in human capital is a crucial aspect of building an economy that is both more productive and fairer, and any growth strategy must incorporate an agenda for increasing human capital and workforce skills within t...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Christopher Pissarides: 'The more I study AI, the more optimistic I get about the labour market'

The rapid developments in artificial intelligence have been causing fears that many jobs will disappear. But Christopher Pissarides sees reason for optimism. In this Q&A with Maayan Arad, he says that the need to deal wi...Read more...

Blog

LSE iQ:

Is AI coming for our jobs? (podcast)

Maayan Arad speaks to experts about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the courtroom, and what might happen if robots take over the roles of judges. And explore how journalism and other professional fields could be affected...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productive robots and industrial employment: the role of national innovation systems

In a model with robots, and automatable and non-automatable human tasks, we examine robot-labour substitutions and show how they are influenced by a country's 'innovation system'. Substitution depends on demand and produ...Read more...

CEP report

UK growth: a new chapter

The UK Economy is at a critical juncture. Leaving the EU creates economic challenges that necessitate widespread policy change. But this also generates an opportunity to tackle some of the long-standing challenges which ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Tough choices for a troubled euro

Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides thinks that either the euro should be dismantled or the direction of European economic policy reversed....Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Unemployment in the Great Recession

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the USA and the UK to the Great Recession of 2008-9 using Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD using other techniques. It is shown that the UK suff...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in the Great Recession

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the United States and Britain to the Great Recession of 2008-09 by making use of Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD with other techniques. It is ...Read more...

CEP report

Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation

What institutions and policies are needed to sustain UK economic growth in the dynamic world economy of the twentyfirst century? After years of inadequate investment in skills, infrastructure and innovation, there are lo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The future of work in Europe

Employment in the European Union is still falling short of the objectives set by the continent's leaders more than 10 years ago. Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides explains why Europe remains behind the United States in job...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Welfare Policy and the Distribution of Hours of Work

We examine the distribution of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities when sectors are divided into three groups: one that produces goods without home substitutes and two oth...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employment Outcomes in the Welfare State

We examine the implications of tax and subsidy policies for employment in the 'three worlds of welfare', Anglo-Saxon, Continental European and Scandinavian. We argue that home production is key to a proper evaluation of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Ins and Outs of European Unemployment

In this paper we study the contribution of inflows and outflows to the dynamics of unemployment in three European countries, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. We compare performance in these three countries making us...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Unemployment Volatility Puzzle: Is Wage Stickiness the Answer?

I study the cyclical behavior of an equilibrium search model with endogenous job creation and destruction, with focus on the model?s failure to match the observed cyclical volatility of unemployment. Job creation in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment and Hours of Work: The North Atlantic Divide Revisited

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trends in Hours and Economic Growth

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economic sectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on the structural transformation between agriculture, man...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Lisbon five years later. What future for European employment and growth?

At the Lisbon summit of 2000 the European Union (EU) set an agenda for making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. The targets that were set then are unlikely to be achieved. European countries need to conce...Read more...

CentrePiece article

What future for European jobs?

In a world of rapid technological progress and increasing international competition, how can European countries improve their poor employment performance? Christopher Pissarides argues that much needs to change in the lo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Understanding labour markets

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CentrePiece article

Is new technology good or bad for jobs?

'If men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.' Chris Pissarides investigates whether President Kennedy's claim is still true....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity Growth and Employment: Theory and Panel Estimates

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate a model for employment, wages and investment with an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Balanced Growth With Structural Change

We study a multi-sector model of growth with differences in TFP growth rates across sectors and derive sufficient conditions for the coexistence of a balanced aggregate growth path, with all aggregates growing at the sam...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story

Unemployment in Britain has fallen from high European-style levels to US levels. I argue that the key reasons are first the reform of monetary policy, in 1993 with the adoption of inflation targeting and in 1997 with the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scale Effects in Markets with Search

Reduced-form tests of scale effects in markets with search, run when aggregate matching functions are estimated, may miss important scale effects at the micro level, because of the reactions of job searchers. A semi-stru...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumption and Savings with Unemployment Risk: Implications for Optimal Employment Contracts

This paper derives optimal employment contracts when workers are risk averse and there are employment and unemployment risks. Without income insurance, consumption rises during employment and falls during unemployment. O...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and Industrial Location with Heterogeneous Labor

We show in the framework of a new economic geography model that when labor is heterogenous and productivity depends on the quality of the match between job and worker, trade liberalization may lead to industrial agglomer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Company Start-Up Costs and Employment

I study the role of company start-up costs for employment performance. The model is search equilibrium with a new concept for firms. Agents have an innate managerial ability and make a career choice to become either mana...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Taxes, Subsidies and Equilibrium Labor Market Outcomes

We explore the effects of taxes and subsidies on job creation, job destruction, employment, and wages in the Mortensen-Pissarides version of the search and matching equilibrium framework. Qualitative analytical results s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Looking Into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function

We survey the microfoundations, empirical evidence and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. Several microeconomic matching mechanisms have been suggested in the literature with some successes but...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Hopes and disillusions

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CEP discussion paper

Job Reallocation, Employment Fluctuations and Unemployment

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it reviews the model of search and matching equilibrium and derives the properties of employment and unemployment equilibrium. Second, it applies the model to the study of emp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Employment Tax Cuts on Unemployment and Wages: The Role of Unemployment Benefits and Tax Structure

I model and simulate the effects of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages in four equilibrium models: competitive, union bargaining, search and efficiency wages. I find that if the ratio of unemployment compensat...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economic growth: how much does education count

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CEP discussion paper

Technological Progress

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Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Job creation and job destruction in the theory of unemployment

In this paper we model a job-specific shock process in the matching model of unemployment with non-cooperative wage behaviour. We obtain endogenous job creation and job destruction processes and study their properties. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment

In this paper we model a job-specific shock process in the matching model of unemployment with non-cooperative wage behaviour. We obtain endogenous job creation and job destruction processes and study their properties. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment, Consumption and Growth

In this paper we highlight certain links between unemployment, savings and growth. Using a standard overlapping generations framework modified to incorporate matching frictions in the labour market and a technology capab...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Search Theory at Twenty-One

This paper reviews work in search theory, twenty-one years after the publication of the influential Phelps volume. It concentrates on work that builds on the concept of the matching function. It reviews the empirical fou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Search Unemployment with on-the-job Search

This paper introduces on-the-job search into the model of search equilibrium that builds on the concept of the matching function and non-cooperative wage behavior. On-the-job search takes place only at short job tenures ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Macroeconomic adjustment and poverty in selected developed countries

This paper studies the effect of the business cycle on poverty, drawing evidence from the United States, Great Britain, Sweden and Australia. Many of the poor in those countries are outside the labour market and for thos...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who are the unemployed?

This paper provides an analysis of the incidence of unemployment in Britain between 1979 and 1986. Using Labour Force Survey data, we attempt to quantify the extent to which different groups in the population are exposed...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labour market policies and unemployment in the OECD

The massive increase in unemployment throughout the OECD since the early 1970s has led governments in many countries to introduce, or to expand, labour market policies such as training schemes, employment subsidies, publ...Read more...