Zettelmeyer, Jeromin, (2017), “Greece Needs More Official Debt Relief—But How Much and at What Price?”, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 4 April Europe’s Greece problem, which brought the euro area to the brink of a breakup in 2015, is back in the headlines. And so, too, is the issue of whether Greece can succeed without more debt relief—an issue on which European officials remain at loggerheads with the International Monetary Fund …Read More

Chrysoloras, Nikos, Wishart, Ian, Nikas, Sotiris, (2017), “Greece Edges Toward Another Crisis as Bailout Quarrel Persists”, Bloomberg, 20 March Euro-area finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday will reiterate that the government of Alexis Tsipras has yet to comply with the terms attached to the emergency loans that have kept the country afloat since 2010. While Tsipras had promised the long delayed review of the latest bailout would be completed …Read More

Papazoglou, Alexis, (2017), “What conspiracy theories can tell us about politics in Greece”, EUROPP, 7 March A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk on conspiracy theories. Hugo Drochon, a post-doc for the Conspiracy and Democracy project at the University of Cambridge, presented the results of a YouGov poll on questions dealing with the extent to which people held conspiracy theory-like beliefs. The findings showed that conspiracy theories are …Read More

Merler, Silvia, (2017), “Should we worry about Greek banks?”, Bruegel, 23 February Earlier this month, the IMF and the European institutions clashed over conditions for sustainability of the Greek debt. One of the main disagreements seems to be the evaluation of the Greek banks’ health. Whose assessment should be trusted and are there reasons to worry? Relevant Posts Onado, Marco, (2017), “In search of a European solution for banks’ non-performing loans”, VoxEu, …Read More

Wyplosz, Charles, (2017), “When the IMF evaluates the IMF”, VoxEu, 17 February The IMF has just released its self-evaluation of its Greek lending, in which it admits to many mistakes. This column and argues that the report misses one important error – reliance on the Debt Sustainability Analysis – but notes that the IMF’s candour should be a model for the other participants in the lending, namely, the European Commission and …Read More

Countouris, Nicola, Koukiadaki, Aristea, (2017), “Greek Glass Half-Full: The CJEU And Europe’s ‘Highly Competitive Social Market’ Economy”, Social Europe, 13 February  The case, which was referred to the CJEU by the Greek Council of State (Supreme Administrative Court), concerned the question of whether the powers of the Minister for Labour to refuse planned collective redundancies under certain circumstances are compatible with EU Law. The reluctance of Greece to abolish this restriction …Read More

Mody, Ashoka, (2017),  “The IMF Should Get Out of Greece”, Bloomberg, 3 February The IMF should never have gotten into Greece in the first place. As late as March 2010, with concerns about the Greek government’s ability to pay its debts roiling markets, Europe’s leaders wanted the IMF to stay away. Europeans feared that the fund’s financial assistance to one of their own would signal broader weakness in the currency union. …Read More

Nektarios, Milton, Tinios, Platon, Simeonidis, George, (2017), “A pension system for younger workers in Greece: A proposal for growth”,  LSE Hellenic Observatory, 13 January Recent pension reforms help to trap Greece in deep crisis, but only increase the insecurity of pensioners. To break out of that vicious circle, a fresh start is needed. Such can result from the immediate introduction of a new type of pre-funded pensions. Such a new …Read More

Panagiotidis, Theodore, Chisiridis, Konstantinos, (2017), “Economic growth for Greece’s trade partners and Greek export growth”, LSE Hellenic Observatory, 6 January This note investigates two issues: First, to identify the most important trade partners of Greece over the last twenty years and how their relative significance has evolved. Second, to examine how sensitive is the Greek export growth relative to the economic growth of Greece’s trade partners?The Greek economy is in recession …Read More

Obstfeld, Maurice, Thomsen, M. Poul, (2016), “ Technical Note on Greece’s adjustment programme”, IMF Direct, 12 December We recently published a blog aimed at correcting some misinformation and clarifying the IMF’s views on Greece. Some readers have had questions about the data underlying our analysis, and we thought it would be helpful, once again, to set the facts straight. Relevant Posts Obstfeld, Maurice, M. Thomsen, Poul, (2016), “The IMF is not …Read More