In this seminar, Professor Alogoskoufis will present a paper that analyses and interprets the evolution of the state and the economy of post-war Greece, before and after the transition to democracy in 1974.

The transition to democracy led to a regime-change involving a very large part of the ideological and institutional edifice that characterized Greece in the twenty-five years between the end of the civil war in 1949 and the transition to democracy in 1974. Although social and political performance flourished after the regime-change, economic performance deteriorated significantly. The analysis suggests that although this was to be partly expected, the deterioration is also the result of the failures of the new political regime to substitute the commitment and coordination mechanisms that had contributed to the economic ‘miracle’ of the 1950s and the 1960s. Furthermore, Greece entered the E.U and, later, the euro area relatively unprepared, something which contributed to the deterioration in its economic performance and, eventually, the debt crisis of the 2010s. The final section of the paper discusses several reforms that could help put Greece back on track economically, consolidating its position in the E.U and the euro area while strengthening the desirable political and social characteristics of the post-1974 regime.

Meet our speakers and chair

George Alogoskoufis is Professor (since 1990) and former Chairman (2020-2022) of the Department of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business. Since 2009 he has been a Research Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a Fellow of the European Economic Association. For three academic years between 2016 and 2019 he was Professor in the Konstantinos Karamanlis Chair at the Fletcher School of Tufts University in the USA. From September 1996 to October 2009 he was a member of the Hellenic Parliament, while from March 2004 to January 2009 he was Minister of Economy and Finance. He holds a Ph.D in Economics from LSE (1981) and specialises in macroeconomics and international economics. He has published seven books and over fifty papers in some of the top academic journals in Economics (American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, The Economic Journal, The European Economic Review, The Journal of Monetary Economics, The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Economica and others) with many references and citations in the international literature. His most recent book, Dynamic Macroeconomics, a graduate textbook, was published in 2019 by MIT Press.

Kevin Featherstone is the Hellenic Observatory Director and Professorial Research Fellow, LSE.

The twitter Hashtag for this event is: #LSEGreece

The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as one of the premier research centres on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. It engages in a range of activities, including developing and supporting academic and policy-related research; organisation of conferences, seminars and workshops; academic exchange through visiting fellowships and internships; as well as teaching at the graduate level through LSE's European Institute.