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This chapter discusses Venizelos' economic policies. Venizelos' first four-year term (1910–14) in power is distinguished by the dynamism and the strong will of a leader, whose personality was still pristine, and of the new political personnel who surrounded him. The heralded ‘recovery’ had a dual content: economic development — ‘our policy for the development of agriculture and wealth in general’, as he himself characterised it — and social justice: on this issue, with obvious political aim, Venizelos concurrently gave shape to the diffuse social protest which had been manifested in many ways in the conjuncture of the military mutiny of 1909, which had also brought him to power. The 1917–20 period, which corresponds to the stepping-up of the war effort, represents a critical turning point. The liberal management was abolished de facto, albeit provisionally. State control of the economy expanded significantly, new views on the Greek economy began to take shape, while attitudes to social protest hardened decisively.

This chapter reviews the performance of the Greek economy before and during the global financial crisis. It also presents policy options for Greece going forward, drawing to a significant extent on the conclusions of subsequent chapters. The chapter first studies Greece's economic performance in the decades before the crisis. It discusses the evolution of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and productivity, debt, consumption, investment, wages and prices. The chapter then turns to the quality of the institutions pertaining to the business environment (product market regulation, justice system, access to finance, and labor market regulation), and to social protection and public good provision (pensions, welfare system, health care, and education). It also identifies interconnections between institutional quality and macroeconomic outcomes.

This chapter studies the cases of Greece and Ireland in 2010. Amidst the raging global financial crisis, the Greek economy appeared to have held up well. However, every informed observer knew that Greece's statistical data was appalling—and too often deliberately misleading. It was later revealed that Greek debt was above 110 percent of GDP, and, with large deficits, debt was piling up rapidly. The chapter then looks at the Irish crisis, which had been building since late-September 2008. To persuade creditors to continue to fund Irish banks, the government had guaranteed that it would repay their debts if the banks themselves were unable do so. Irish banks had made bad lending decisions and had made huge losses. If not already bankrupt, they were heading to bankruptcy as property prices had continued to fall.

This chapter examines the competitiveness of product markets in Greece. One of the main determinants of competitiveness is the quality of the set of rules and regulations that govern the operation of markets. These should promote competition, investment and entrepreneurship. Heavy and low-quality regulation is generally associated with greater inefficiency and poor economic outcomes. This chapter describes competitiveness in the Greek economy and its evolution over time using various internationally comparable indicators that cover many dimensions of competitiveness. It demonstrates that product markets in Greece are among the most heavily and misregulated markets of advanced countries, though the reforms that took place during 2011–2014 had a positive impact. The chapter investigates in greater depth the misregulation of product markets, identifying possible causes and illustrating through case studies. It makes the case for a National Competition and Competitiveness Policy plan to improve the regulatory institutions and reduce regulatory burden. Finally, it looks at the successes and failures of regulatory reform history in two important markets: energy and telecommunications.

This chapter describes the conceptual framework used by the book to study the economy of ancient Greece. It begins with a discussion of the debate between “primitivists,” represented by Karl Bücher, and “modernists,” represented by Eduard Meyer, over the nature of the ancient Greek economy. It considers Bücher's adherence to the so-called German Historical School of Political Economy and goes on to examine the views of Moses I. Finley and Max Weber regarding the ancient economy, Karl Polanyi's use of institutionalism as an approach to the study of the ancient economy, and the main assumptions of New Institutional Economics (NIE) with regard to the genesis and evolution of institutions. The chapter also analyzes the transaction costs theory and concludes with an assessment of criticisms against the classical economists' economic agent, the homo economicus, and the influence of constrained choices and limited rationality on economic performance.

This chapter examines the logic of growth in the Greek city-states. It first considers the relationship between self-consumption and economic growth, focusing on the roles played by self-consumption and the market in agriculture and in the ancient Greek economy more generally. It then explains how the Greek cities managed to become the dominant culture in the Mediterranean between about 700 BCE and 300 BCE after experiencing negative growth at the end of the Bronze Age and probably very slow growth during the Early Iron Age. It also explores the notion that the ancient Greek economy did not manage to achieve “capitalist revolution” or “industrial revolution”; the economic impact of technological innovation; and how innovation is associated with supply and demand. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the transition to modernity, arguing that such transition makes ancient Greece's economic history part of the long history of the western world.

This essay surveys the range of Greek maritime research studied over the last twenty years and explores the development of maritime history within the context of political, social and economic history in Greece. It also strives to examine the main vehicles of historical research, research institutes, historical journals and museums, and determines the main problems encountered by researchers.

This chapter examines the Greek economic crisis and confirms that its causes are deeply rooted in the way the country has been run over the past thirty years. It shows that Greek governments chose, over these past decades, to gradually turn the Greek economy into an uncompetitive conundrum of excessive, rigid, and vague regulations that distributed rents to well-organized interest groups, thus creating a fertile breeding ground for corruption and abuse of office and public money. The result was the creation and consolidation of various constituencies with strong incentives (and the capacity) to oppose corrective reforms, which, in turn, pushed the country into deep crisis in 2010.