At a time of persistent unemployment, Nobel Laureate Chris Pissarides’s search theory offers significant lessons for policy makers

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Chris Pissarides of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance, jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen, ‘for their analysis of markets with search frictions’. As Barbara Petrongolo explains, their research has deeply enhanced our understanding of how labour markets work and how policy-makers should respond.