IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v26y2010i4p568-576.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

EMU and the Greek crisis: The political-economy perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Katsimi, Margarita
  • Moutos, Thomas

Abstract

We describe the political-economic environment that precipitated the Greek crisis. Involved were collaborations between private interests and the formally elected and appointed custodians of the public interest, and a captured politicized government bureaucracy. The confluence of these forces resulted in the pilfering of public funds, rampant tax evasion, and deterioration in the quality of publicly provided goods. From a macroeconomic perspective, the failure of successive Greek governments to reverse the decline in the national saving rate, and not the government budget deficit per se, was the main reason for the crisis. There was misrepresentation of official Greek national statistics but the inability or unwillingness of EMU authorities to react to visible portents of Greek failure, such as ongoing large current account deficits that were not hidden by "Greek statistics", exposes a major fault line in the EMU's design and implementation through the Stability and Growth Pact.

Suggested Citation

  • Katsimi, Margarita & Moutos, Thomas, 2010. "EMU and the Greek crisis: The political-economy perspective," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 568-576, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:26:y:2010:i:4:p:568-576
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176-2680(10)00053-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Z. Aliber & Charles P. Kindleberger, 2015. "Manias, Panics, and Crashes," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, edition 0, number 978-1-137-52574-1, August.
    2. Dani Rodrik, 1999. "Democracies Pay Higher Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 707-738.
    3. Schneider, Friedrich, 2005. "Shadow economies around the world: what do we really know?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 598-642, September.
    4. Corden, W. Max, 1995. "Economic Policy, Exchange Rates, and the International System," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226115917.
    5. Tsakalotos, Euclid, 1998. "The Political Economy of Social Democratic Economic Policies: The Pasok Experiment in Greece," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 14(1), pages 114-138, Spring.
    6. Harberger, Arnold C, 1980. "Vignettes on the World Capital Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 331-337, May.
    7. McKinnon, Ronald I & Pill, Huw, 1997. "Credible Economic Liberalizations and Overborrowing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 189-193, May.
    8. von Hagen, Jurgen, 2005. "Fiscal Rules and Fiscal Performance in the EU and Japan," CEPR Discussion Papers 5330, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Milesi-Ferretti, G-M & Razin, A, 1996. "Current-Account Sustainability," Princeton Studies in International Economics 81, International Economics Section, Departement of Economics Princeton University,.
    10. Guillermo A. Calvo, 1998. "Capital Flows and Capital-Market Crises: The Simple Economics of Sudden Stops," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 1, pages 35-54, November.
    11. Adi Brender & Allan Drazen, 2008. "How Do Budget Deficits and Economic Growth Affect Reelection Prospects? Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2203-2220, December.
    12. Charles P. Kindleberger & Robert Z. Aliber, 2005. "Manias, Panics and Crashes," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, edition 0, number 978-0-230-62804-5, August.
    13. Angelopoulos, Konstantinos & Philippopoulos, Apostolis & Vassilatos, Vanghelis, 2009. "The social cost of rent seeking in Europe," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 280-299, September.
    14. Alan Ahearne & Brigit Schmitz & Jürgen von Hagen, 2007. "Current Account Imbalances in the Euro Area (draft version)," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0345, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    15. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti & Assaf Razin, 1996. "Sustainability of Persistent Current Account Deficits," NBER Working Papers 5467, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Myles, Gareth D., 2000. "Wasteful government, tax evasion, and the provision of public goods," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 51-74, March.
    17. Hillman, Arye L. & Swank, Otto, 2000. "Why political culture should be in the lexicon of economics," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 1-4, March.
    18. Elias Mossialos & Sara Allin & Konstantina Davaki, 2005. "Analysing the Greek health system: a tale of fragmentation and inertia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(S1), pages 151-168, September.
    19. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2011. "From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1676-1706, August.
    20. Marjit, Sugata & Mukherjee, Vivekananda & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2000. "Harassment, corruption and tax policy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 75-94, March.
    21. Edwin M. Truman, 2005. "Budget and external deficits: not twins but the same family," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Feb.
    22. Swan, Peter L., 2009. "The political economy of the subprime crisis: Why subprime was so attractive to its creators," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 124-132, March.
    23. Robert Z. Aliber & Charles P. Kindleberger & Robert N. McCauley, 2023. "Manias, Panics, and Crashes," Springer Books, Springer, edition 8, number 978-3-031-16008-0, July.
    24. Olivier Blanchard, 2007. "Adjustment within the euro. The difficult case of Portugal," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 6(1), pages 1-21, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Piersanti, Giovanni, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Theory of Exchange Rate Crises," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653126, Decembrie.
    2. Beutel, Johannes & List, Sophia & von Schweinitz, Gregor, 2018. "An evaluation of early warning models for systemic banking crises: Does machine learning improve predictions?," Discussion Papers 48/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    3. Keskinsoy, Bilal, 2017. "Taxi, Takeoff and Landing: Behavioural Patterns of Capital Flows to Emerging Markets," MPRA Paper 78129, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Roy, Saktinil & Kemme, David M., 2020. "The run-up to the global financial crisis: A longer historical view of financial liberalization, capital inflows, and asset bubbles," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Leszek Lesniewski, 2015. "Gospodarki Danii, Finlandii i Szwecji a globalny kryzys finansowy / The Global Financial Crisis in Denmark, Finland and Sweden," International Economics, University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, issue 9, pages 5-22, March.
    6. Bindseil, Ulrich & Jabłecki, Juliusz, 2013. "Central bank liquidity provision, risk-taking and economic efficiency," Working Paper Series 1542, European Central Bank.
    7. Willi Semmler, 2011. "Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-20680-1, July.
    8. Louzis, Dimitrios & Vouldis, Angelos, 2013. "A financial systemic stress index for Greece," Working Paper Series 1563, European Central Bank.
    9. Daniela Marchettini & Mr. Rodolfo Maino, 2015. "Systemic Risk Assessment in Low Income Countries: Balancing Financial Stability and Development," IMF Working Papers 2015/190, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Louzis, Dimitrios P. & Vouldis, Angelos T., 2012. "A methodology for constructing a financial systemic stress index: An application to Greece," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1228-1241.
    11. Beutel, Johannes & List, Sophia & von Schweinitz, Gregor, 2019. "Does machine learning help us predict banking crises?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    12. Susan Lund & Charles Roxburgh, 2010. "Debt and Deleveraging," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 11(2), pages 1-30, April.
    13. Bagus, Philipp & Howden, David, 2010. "The Term Structure of Savings, the Yield Curve, and Maturity Mismatching," MPRA Paper 79592, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Jacome H., Luis I. & Saadi Sedik, Tahsin & Townsend, Simon, 2012. "Can emerging market central banks bail out banks? A cautionary tale from Latin America," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 424-448.
    15. Frankel, Jeffrey, 2010. "Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1439-1520, Elsevier.
    16. Paulo M.M. Rodrigues & Rita Fradique Lourenço, 2015. "House prices: bubbles, exuberance or something else? Evidence from euro area countries," Working Papers w201517, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    17. Hertrich Markus, 2019. "A Novel Housing Price Misalignment Indicator for Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 759-794, December.
    18. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2009. "Post-Keynesian economics How to move forward," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 227-246.
    19. Farla, Kristine, 2012. "Institutions and credit," MERIT Working Papers 2012-038, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    20. Schwäbe, Carsten, 2013. "Unkonventionelle Geldpolitik: Warum die Europäische Zentralbank ihre Unabhängigkeit nicht verloren hat," CIW Discussion Papers 3/2013, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).

    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:eee:poleco:v:26:y:2010:i:4:p:568-576. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    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.