OREANDA-NEWS. March 18, 2011. UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486), the world’s largest aluminium producer, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) are pleased to announce details of the second edition of UC RUSAL President’s Forum organized under the auspices of the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study. The 2010 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Professor Christopher Pissarides, will be the guest speaker of the Forum on Monday, 21 March 2011.

Professor Pissarides will speak on “Equilibrium in the Labour Market with Search Frictions” – discussing the research that won him the 2010 Nobel Prize with two other scholars – Professor Peter Diamond of MIT and Professor Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University. He will then have a dialogue with HKUST President Tony F Chan on his insights.

Professor Pissarides is a Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Marfin-Laiki Chair in European Studies at the University of Cyprus. He specializes in the economics of unemployment, labor market theory, labor market policy, as well as growth and structural change. He has written extensively in professional journals, and his book Equilibrium Unemployment Theory is standard reference in the economics of unemployment. Outside academia, Professor Pissarides has served as an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Cyprus, and on the European Employment Task Force. He has been a consultant on employment policy and other macroeconomic issues for the World Bank, the European Commission, the Bank of England, and the OECD.

‘We are honored to welcome Professor Christopher Pissarides as a guest speaker at the UC RUSAL President’s Forum, a unique activity aiming to provide a global platform for the world’s most brilliant minds to facilitate exchange of knowledge and ideas. RUSAL considers human capital as the most important asset of the company. Operating across the globe, we know it from our own experience how complex, specific and radically different labor markets can be. It is exciting that the Nobel Prize winning model of the labor market that characterizes the search activity of the unemployed, the recruiting behavior of firms and wage formation will be presented by Professor Pissarides in person at our event destined to influence the younger generation of scientists and business leaders, who very soon will become responsible for shaping the global agenda,’ said Oleg Deripaska, CEO of RUSAL.

RUSAL that last year became the first Russian company to list in Hong Kong is strongly committed to Asia. With the mission of strengthening Sino-Russian scientific and business ties, RUSAL and HKUST joined hands in June 2010 to share knowledge and drive discoveries, bringing value to the future. The collaborative project embraces the UC RUSAL President’s Forum organized by the HKUST Institute for Advanced Study, bringing some of the world’s most inspirational celebrities to Hong Kong as guest speakers. International politicians, businessmen, scholars and scientists will give a series of lectures, sharing their success stories and solutions for global challenges. Mr Oleg Deripaska, CEO of UC RUSAL, kicked off the Forum at HKUST in September 2010. Student exchanges between HKUST and leading Russian universities also form an integral part of cooperative program. Another important project within the cooperative framework is joint research on the application of innovative technologies to the aluminium sector and a search for innovative solutions to expand the use of aluminium in construction.

The two-hour lecture will be delivered on 21 March 2011 at 2:30 pm Hong Kong time at Citi Lecture Theater (LT-A), HKUST.