Greece ― From Exit to Recovery?

Two Greek economic analysts explain the Greek financial crisis ?from beginning to end.

The first section of Greece: From Exit to Recovery? explores the lead up to to Greece's adoption of the euro. Authors Theodore Pelagidis and Michael Mitsopoulos believe that the ensuing challenges were foreseeable. In fact, the authors posit that it was Greece's difficultly in dealing with those challenges that sparked the euro crisis.

Section II analyzes discrete sectors of the economy, paying special attention to labor and finance ?and the mistakes creditors made in focusing on reducing Greek incomes ?rather than increasing competitiveness on non-labor costs.

Section III investigates why Greek companies spend relatively little on research and development.? The authors' analysis indicates that policy decisions largely determine R& D performance in the private sector, and they advance a number of specific policy proposals to improve the situation.

Theodore Pelagidis is a professor of economics at the University of Piraeus, Greece, and a nonresident senior fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings. He has also been a NATO scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University, and an NBG professorial fellow at the London School of Economics.

Michael Mitsopoulos is an economist at the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, Greece, and has taught at the Economic University of Athens and the University of Piraeus. Pelagidis and Mitsopoulos are coauthors of Understanding the Crisis in Greece: From Boom to Bust (Palgrave Macmillian, 2011).