IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/diw/diwdeb/2012-3-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Greek Economy Needs Growth Strategy

Author

Listed:
  • Karl Brenke

Abstract

Greece has been living beyond its means for a long time now and has accumulated foreign debt. The high level of national debt is merely a reflection of the problems; the actual cause is insufficient economic power. The top-priority political objective is to strengthen the substance of the economy-in particular, the export base-to such an extent that in future, the balance of payments is at least equalized. This means Greece needs a growth strategy to catch-up industrialization. So far, revenue in the economic exchange with other countries has been mainly generated by tourism. However, this pillar is far from sufficient; although there are growth prospects in tourism in southern Europe, these should not be overestimated. On the other hand, Greece's industrial base is only small and heavily biased towards the domestic market. Its production structure and foreign trade links for goods show that the Greek economy presents virtually no competition for developed industrialized nations. Consequently, contrary to claims, the wage restraint in Germany has not put the Greek economy under significant pressure, either. The manufacturing sector and large sections of the economy are to a large extent marked by small-scale production. Overall, in Greece, there is one self-employed worker for every two employees; the employment structure more typical of a transition economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Karl Brenke, 2012. "Greek Economy Needs Growth Strategy," DIW Economic Bulletin, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 2(3), pages 3-15.
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2012-3-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.394094.de/diw_econ_bull_2012-03-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elias Sanidas, 2014. "The Greek Non-Paradigm of Economic and Business Development, and Comparisons with South Korea," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 64(3), pages 30-48, July-Sept.
    2. Benedikt Herrmann & Alexander Kritikos, 2013. "Growing out of the crisis: hidden assets to Greece's transition to an innovation economy," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    3. Benner, Maximilian & Buzin, Johannes & Hoffmann, Jakob & Taifour, Ahmad Azzam, 2017. "Inclusive local development: A strategy for Heraklion, Greece," MPRA Paper 81323, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Benner, Maximilian, 2012. "How to Save Greece? A Menu for Rebuilding the Greek Economy through Industrial Policy," MPRA Paper 40748, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Greece; economic structures and problems;

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2012-3-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.