2014-15 Seminar Series

The Restructuring of the Greek Economy: 2010-2014

Greece entered the current crisis with huge deficits in public finances and external balances.  Especially worrisome was the enormous primary budget deficit.  Since the inception of the first stabilization program in 2010, Greece made the most spectacular fiscal consolidation among developed countries since WW II.  At the same time, a large number of structural reforms were implemented, the competiveness of the economy recovered and the current account is in surplus for the first time in decades.  However, the socio-economic cost of the adjustment was enormous in terms of output lost, unemployment increases and decline in several socio-economic indicators.  The paper reviews developments since 2010, analyses the current juncture and outlines the medium- to long-term prospects of the economy.

Professor Panos Tsakloglou is Professor at the Department of International and European Economic Studies of the Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick and was previously Lecturer in Economics at the University of Bristol, UK (1987-1990) and Member of Eurostat's panel of experts on Poverty Statistics (1990-92).

He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Review of Income and Wealth and Journal of Economic Inequality. His research focuses on questions of inequality, poverty, social exclusion, education economics, and social policy. Among others, his research has been published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Review of Income and Wealth, the Journal of European Social Policy, the Economics of Education Review, the Journal of Income Distribution, Education Economics, the Bulletin of Economic Research and the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.