ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF WORLD WAR II FOR GREECE

2016

This paper is part of an ongoing research project which focuses its attention on the relation between the economic, political and social integration of migrants and refugees, the re-organization of the state, the legislative modernization and the economic policy during the interwar period in Greece. The key question of the research is in what different ways and procedures a city can be transformed under emergency conditions, such as that of the massive inflow of refugees and immigrants. In 1922 Greece, a state of 5 million inhabitants received a wave of refugees, the Greeks of Diaspora from Asia Minor, of such a scale (1.5 millions) that it overturned every population balance in the country. The presence of this large number of needy people was a problem whose solution was clearly beyond the limited resources of the Greek state, which was an underdeveloped country, financially exhausted by the Balkan wars, the Word War I and the Greco-Turkish war. The forced clustering of the Greek...

2016

European Review of Economic History, 2013

__________________________________________________________ iii 1. Introduction _______________________________________________________ 1 2. The quest for stability in Greece _______________________________________ 6 3. Sliding on the golden edge: fight, flight and failure _______________________ 11 4. Modeling the currency crisis _________________________________________ 17 5. Conclusions _______________________________________________________ 27 Appendix A. Graphs __________________________________________________ 31 Appendix B. Modelling the currency peg __________________________________ 39 Appendix C. Data analysis _____________________________________________ 41 References _________________________________________________________ 42 Acknowledgements I am thankful to N. Pittis and Olga Christodoulaki (no relation) for valuable suggestions, and also to participants at a seminar in the University of Cyprus, and in the Conference on 'Interwar Economic Leadership in Small Countries' organized by the Venizelos Foundation for helpful comments on an earlier version. Help by Sofia Lazaretou on the recently compiled data series of the Bank of Greece is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.

1999

EEag Report on the European Economy 2010

1 This chapter has been prepared with the partial input of Thomas Moutos. He also kindly allowed the EEAG to use material he has published elsewhere and has assured the EEAG that the editors have given their promission. See Katsimi and Moutos (2010) and Moutos and Tsitsikas (2010). 2 The 2009 budget deficit turned out to be significantly higher than that. After a revision by Eurostat in April 2010, which placed it at 13.6 percent of GDP, the latest figure (November 2010) announced by Eurostat is 15.4 percent of GDP. 3 The total of 750 billion euros will consist of up to 500 billion euros provided by euro-area member states, with the IMF providing at least half as much. 3.2.1 Growth performance Following the end of the three-year civil war in 1949, Greece started its reconstruction period in the 1950s. According to Maddison (1995), Greece had in 1950 the lowest percapita income among the group of countries that later became the EU-15. Consistent with convergence theories, Greece was the fastest growing economy among this group of countries from 1950 to 1973 and by 1973 its per capita GDP had risen above Ireland's and Portugal's. During the rest of the 1970s Greece's growth rate decelerated, but it was still the highest among the (later to become the) EU-15, and the second highest growth rate among the OECD countries behind only Japan. This development is portrayed in Figure 3.1. The long period of fast growth came to an abrupt end in the 1980s. During this decade, per capita GDP in Greece grew not only at a slower rate than the peripheral-4 (Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), but also in comparison with the (unweighted) average for the (later to become the) EU-15 and the OECD (2 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively). The anaemic performance of the economy continued until 1993 (the 1990 to 1993 growth in per capita GDP was minus 0.5 percent per annum), but improved for the rest of the 1990s and accelerated in the first decade of the new millennium. However, as discussed below, the relatively fast growth of the last decade did not have solid foundations, but was based on an unsustainable public and private spending spree. 3.2.2 Labour market The changes in the average growth rates from decade to decade were reflected in changes in the unemployment rate (Figure 3.2). Until 1981, due to fast output growth and emigration, the unemployment rate was kept below 4 percent. By 1984, the unemployment rate had climbed above 7 percent, and it declined slightly up to the end of the decade. During the 1990s the unemployment rate increased gradually to 11.7 percent in 1999, despite the fact that the 1990s were a highergrowth decade than the 1980s. The fast growth during the last decade brought the unemployment rate down to 7.7 percent in 2008, but by 2009 it had climbed to 9.5 percent, reaching even 13.5 percent in October 2010. The fluctuations in the unemployment rate were not matched by fluctuations in the total employment rate which, following a small decline in the early 1990s, increased steadily, from 55 percent in 1983 to 61 percent in 2008. Unlike other euro-area (EA) countries, the increases in the employment rate in Greece were not accompanied by substantial decreases in hours worked per employed person (Figure 3.3). The average annual hours worked per employed person remain far above the EA-12 average (Greece: 2,160, EA-12: 1,578, in 2009) and are higher than in any other country in the EU-27.

Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2013

Review of Radical Political Economics, 2018

The Greek turmoil commenced as a balance of payments, or “sudden stop,” crisis induced by large current account and primary government deficits. It became an economic and social disturbance of historic proportions. Its proximate cause was loss of competitiveness within the Eurozone due in large part to domestic German wage policies. The bailout policies, imposed by the lenders primarily for reasons of Eurozone stability and adopted by Greece, have had disastrous effects on both economy and society. The “historical bloc” that dominates Greek society willingly submitted to the bailout strategy, losing sovereignty, for reasons including fear and identity. JEL Classification: E66, F00, F02, F34

1993

The geographical sites are depicted by approximation 1. The year 1922 marks Greece's entrance into the interwar period for the reason that it was in 1922 and not 1918 that her war activities stopped. This was so because of the 1919-1922 Asia Minor military campaign she carried out-and for which she enjoyed the blessings of the allies until late 1920. For a detailed and comprehensive account of this military episode see: G.Hristopoulos (ed.), loTQola tou EAAnvucou EQvouc. Netineooc EAAnvioudc an 6 to 1913-1940 (History of the Greek Nation), (Athens, 1978), Vol.lE, pp.97-247. 2. For a detailed account of the mosaic of approaches that have developed within the International political Economy Tradition -School of Thought see: S Strange, (ed.) Paths to International Political Economy (London, 1984), S.Gill and D.Law, The Global Political Economy -Perspectives. Problems and Policies. (New York, 1988). 3. R.Tooze, "Perspectives and Theory: a Consumers' Guide" in Strange, opcit., pp.7-8. Recent research on the history of international finance in the interwar period demonstrates the dissemination of ideas central to the international political economy tradition. Eichengreen in his introduction to a volume of technical' studies on the topic notes that th e structure and operation of the interwar system -both the nature of its rules and the ways discretion was utilized-hinged on political as much as economic consecrations".