The eight-year adjustment program followed by Greece in the aftermath of the 2010 crisis has been concluded. The program was associated with the deepest and longest recession in Greece’s post war history.

The conclusion of the program presents an opportunity for a limited re-orientation of Greece’s macroeconomic and reform policy, towards a policy mix that will assist the recovery of the Greek economy, but it also entails the danger that Greece returns to ineffective short run policies similar to those that helped bring about the crisis of 2010.

With this in mind, the Karamanlis Chair on Hellenic and European Studies at the Fletcher School of Tufts University and the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics organized a conference on Greece and the Euro: From Crisis to Recovery, at Tufts University, on April 12, 2019.

The conference was organised by Prof. George Alogoskoufis, Karamanlis Chair, Fletcher School, and Prof. Kevin Featherstone, Venizelos Chair, London School of Economics. The conference has been organized with financial support from the Onassis Foundation.

The purpose of the conference was to assess the causes of the Greek crisis and the prospects for the Greek economy after the conclusion of the economic adjustment programs in 2018.

The morning plenary sessions and the afternoon two parallel sessions concentrated on the economics and politics of reform in Greece.

The conference was opened by Prof. Ian Johnstone, Dean of the Fletcher School. The keynote address was by Prof. Lucas Papademos, Member of the Academy of Athens and former Prime Minister of Greece, who was introduced by Prof. Steven Block, Academic Dean of the Fletcher School.

Two panels of speakers provided overviews of the economic, institutional, political and cultural aspects of Greece and the Euro, both before and after the crisis. These included, in alphabetical order, George Alogoskoufis (former Minister of Economy and Finance of Greece), George Chouliarakis (Alternate Minister of Finance of Greece), Nikos Christodoulakis (former Minister of Economy and Finance of Greece), Kevin Featherstone (Head of the Hellenic Observatory at the LSE), Stathis Kalyvas (Gladstone Professor of Government, Oxford University) and Panagiotis Roilos (Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University). The two panels were chaired by Prof. Yannis Ioannides (Max and Herta Neubauer Chair and Professor of Economics, Tufts University) and Prof. Constantine Arvanitopoulos (Professor of International Politics, Panteion University).

The afternoon sessions, in which papers were presented by a number of leading economists, political scientists and other experts, concentrated on more specialized aspects of reform of both Greece and the euro area. The sessions, with links to the slides of the presentations, were as follows:

The Euro Area After the Crisis
Chair: George Chouliarakis (Ministry of Finance)

Yannis Ioannides (Tufts), Reforms, Deficits and Debt: a Unifying Framework for a Fiscal and Monetary Union
Athanasios Orphanides (MIT), Overcoming the Euro Crisis.
George Alogoskoufis (Fletcher and AUEB) and Laurent Jacque(Fletcher), Economic and Financial Asymmetries in the Euro Area
George Pagoulatos (AUEB and ELIAMEP), The Euro Area after the Crisis: An Economic and Political Stocktaking

Fiscal, Financial and Labor Market Reforms
Chair: Ploutarchos Sakellaris (AUEB)

Apostolis Philippopoulos (AUEB) and George Economides (AUEB), Fiscal and Institutional Preconditions for a sustained recovery
Eleni Louri (AUEB) and Petros Migiakis (Bank of Greece), Financial Preconditions for a Sustained Recovery
Vassilis Monastiriotis (LSE), The Labor Market and Greece’s Unemployment Problem

Productivity, Income Redistribution and Growth
Chair: Nikos Christodoulakis (AUEB)

Nikolaos Leounakis and Ploutarchos Sakellaris (AUEB), Greek Economic Growth: Past and Future
Eirini Andriopoulou, Eleni Kanavitsa and Panos Tsakloglou (AUEB), Income Re-Distribution: From Crisis to Recovery

Institutional Reforms for a Sustained Recovery
Chair: Angelos-Stylianos Chryssogelos (Harvard)

Stella Ladi (Panteion, QMC) and Manto Lampropoulou, Market Regulation via Independent Agencies in Post-Crisis Greece
Calliope Spanou (UOA), Competing Frames and Domestic Discretion: Public administration reform in Greece
Georgia Kaplanoglou (UOA), Fiscal Institutions and the Monitoring of Public Finances: The case of Greece

Political Reforms for a Sustained Recovery
Chair: Stathis Kalyvas (Oxford)

Spyros Kosmides (Oxford), Public attitudes towards domestic reform: Continuity and Change
Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (UOA, Fletcher, Harvard), State-society relations and Domestic Reform Coalitions in Greece in Comparative Perspective
Kevin Featherstone (LSE) and Dimitris Papadimitriou (Manchester), External Discipline and the Greek bailouts: Process makes Politics

Greece’s Foreign Relations after the Crisis
Chair: Stratos Efthymiou (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Katerina Sokou (GWU and Kathimerini), Fast Forward: The Return of Geopolitics in US-Greece Relations
Spyros Economides (LSE), Greece’s Foreign Relations after the Crisis

The papers presented in the conference, and the discussions around them, will be published in a special volume of the conference proceedings in both English and Greek.

Link to the Final Conference Program

Link to the Short Bios of Contributing Authors and Session Chairs

Link to Selected Photos from the Conference Proceedings

Link to the reporting of Kathimerini “Small Wonders in Boston”