Search

This paper aims to explore the perceptions of domestic and foreign entrepreneurs (businesspeople and/or managers) operating in Greece towards the spatial diffusion of FDI effects caused by the privatization programme implemented by the Greek government after an economic crisis. In particular, it investigates whether attracting foreign direct investors through the ongoing privatization programme could be a policy tool for the country's recovery from the prolonged 2008 global economic crisis. To that end, it presents the results of a multinomial logistic regression model based on survey data from a significant sample of domestic and foreign investors in Greece. The key finding of this study suggests that the positive effects of FDI on the recovery of Greece from the economic crisis are more likely to benefit the country's economy as a whole than only the local economy in which the FDI is located. This finding is stronger for entrepreneurs who are (moderately) optimistic about the role of the privatization programme in attracting the interest of foreign investors than others. Overall, there is evidence that FDI attraction policies can help all Greek regions to recover from an economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the effect of a (semi-) deposit run during a debt crisis on crime rates. The study focuses on Greece's protracted debt crisis (2009–2018) and analyzes the response of crime to deposit outflows. It shows that deposit outflows corresponded to a significant increase in property crimes (thefts and burglaries), but not other types of offenses. The study provides useful policy insights for regulatory authorities tasked with monitoring and decreasing the criminogenic effects of financial destabilization [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that Chinese involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean is primarily motivated by increasing the country's economic role within the region through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The paper uses case study analysis methodology dwelling on the evolution and content of Chinese involvement in Greece and Cyprus. Primarily focusing of the nature of the Chinese investments in strategic sectors of the two cases in question the role that that China plays in Eastern Mediterranean is described as a 'silky involvement'. China's policy choices are also perceived to be an opportunity for Greece and Cyprus to combat the negative effects of 2007–2008 economic crises and to increase their geopolitical stronghold in the post-Cold War geopolitical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents Greek primary education stakeholders' views regarding their quality of life and EU-related issues before and during the euro crisis. The study took place in 2016, and the population was primary education teachers and parents of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace region. Respondents answered sets of questions for two different years: 2009, before austerity measures were applied, and 2016, during the crisis. Responses denote dissatisfaction with their quality of life and the EU in 2016. The findings show significant shifts of views between 2009 and 2016 regarding the institution of the EU, the euro, the relationship of Greece with the EU and European citizenship. 2016 statements reveal increased euroscepticism in teachers and parents' views and a large proportion of undecided respondents. However, it seems that more respondents adopt a pro-European attitude regarding the common future of Greece and the EU in 2016. All in all, findings show that, in 2016, respondents are divided into pro-European and eurosceptic, which denotes diffuse attitudes towards the European construct and weak identification with European citizenship. Change during crisis can serve as an opportunity for social innovations and education initiatives that will restore trust on the institution of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notwithstanding Karl Popper’s deep admiration for ancient Greece and his affection for modern Greece, his work has been mostly viewed with caution by Greek scholars who, until relatively recently, often chose to either ignore or downplay it. This stance can be partially attributed to the novel approach of Popper’s critique to Plato which did not fare well with the foundational biases of modern Greek academic tradition and the prevailing intellectual inclinations of Greek scholars in the fields of the methodology of science and political theory. Although this bias has begun to recede during the last decades, there remains a lot to be done to fully integrate Popper’s work into the Greek intellectual and social discourse. Nevertheless, the establishment of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Athens University, along with the efforts of academics and public intellectuals, particularly during the Greek financial crisis of the last decade, have played a pivotal role in generating a broader interest in critical rationalism and popularizing Popper’s ideas among a wider audience. This paper examines the evolution of the reception of Popper’s ideas in Greece, both in scholarly circles and in public life, from the time of publication of his seminal work “The Open Society and its Enemies” until today, highlighting the efforts to foster a more comprehensive understanding of his important contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The economic crisis and the resulting austerity in Greece led to a drastic reduction in healthcare spending, which has been assumed to have impacted people's health. This paper discusses official standardized mortality rates in Greece between 2000 and 2015. Methods: This study was designed to analyze population-level data and collected data from the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Eurostat, and the Hellenic Statistics Authority. Separate linear regression models were developed for the periods before and after the crisis and were compared. Results: Standardized mortality rates do not support a previously reported assumption of a specific and direct negative effect of austerity on global mortality. Standardized rates continued to decrease linearly, and their correlation to economic variables changed after 2009. Total infant mortality rates show an overall rising trend since 2009, but the interpretation is unclear because of the reduction in the absolute number of deliveries. Conclusions: The mortality data from the first six years of the financial crisis in Greece and the decade that preceded do not support the assumption that budget cuts in health are related to the dramatic worsening of the overall health of the Greek people. Still, data suggest an increase in specific causes of death and the burden on a dysfunctional and unprepared health system that is working in an overstretched manner trying to meet needs. The dramatic acceleration of the aging of the population constitutes a specific challenge for the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the debate on regional resilience to crisis in Greece, a country long suffering from insufficient planning mechanisms and recently hit by a severe economic crisis. In the paper, we discuss the spatialities of employment flexibilization vis-à-vis the devaluation of regional productive structures between 2005 and 2016. The paper critically builds on previous accounts of regional resilience, but also seeks to develop the concept through engaging in: (i) how different employment patterns, namely part-time work, present a powerful adaptive mechanism that is related to path-dependent regional production profiles; and (ii) why regions with less favourable pre-crisis production structures and anaemic growth seem to have been less affected by recession and may witness a faster recovery in its aftermath. The paper adopts a multi-layered methodology, using a variety of measures, offering an empirically grounded theorization of contemporary labour market changes within the Southern EU. The results indicate some key reasons for radically reformulating established regulatory and planning practices in order to promote a pattern of resilience that is more friendly to good and well-paid jobs. A prerequisite for the latter is the promotion of territorially cohesive strategies that reduce regional disparities and harness 'unregulated flexibilization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, sustainability agenda has dominated cities' efforts to improve their environment; has been elaborated in European Commission documents, has been disseminated and funded through different mechanisms. The paper examines the way urban sustainability has been framed in Thessaloniki's EU funded urban regeneration projects, focusing on projects that have been materialized or planned, since the outbreak of the financial crisis in Greece in 2010. It places emphasis on conceptual shifts in EU policies regarding sustainability and their reflection on specific urban projects. A critical light is shed on imaginaries pursued, and processes employed in these projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maritime transportation constitutes a dynamic Greek economic sector. Greece accounted for 25% of the Maritime Passenger Traffic (MPT) in the European Union in 2007. However, due to the economic recession since 2009, maritime passenger transportation has been facing increasing fuel prices along with declining demand. In this paper, we develop transfer function models, including macroeconomic indicators, for forecasting the coastal and the Adriatic MPT in Greek ports. The majority of the MPT models include the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an explanatory variable, reflecting the financial impact on maritime flows. Although the employment and the economic crisis dummy are also used as explanatory variables, the unemployment and the oil price do not affect MPT. The coastal traffic models are generally more consistent when the seasonality trend is eliminated, while the international traffic models perform better when the inherent seasonality is considered. This first effort contributes toward filling the gap of MPT forecasting models for supporting policy-making on maritime transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists and social scientists' low professional status looms large when looking at the rapidly changing professional hierarchy based on the prominent role of technology and of scientific applications for peoples' lives. The paper seeks to unveil the inadequate professionalization of sociology in Greece and to relate this situation to the increase in the employment precariousness of sociologists over the years of the economic crisis. Moreover, the dominant economy-centric ideological/ governance model which promotes the 'utilitarianism' of the social sciences has played a significant role in sociology's residual position. The paper is structured along three axes: First of all, the low professional status of sociologists is related to the delayed academic institutionalization of sociology. Secondly, there is brief discussion of the relevant literature on graduate supply and demand in the labour market and the expansion of higher education. Thirdly, a more focused discussion is developed which portrays the opportunities and challenges faced by sociologists and other social scientists in the labour market, giving particular emphasis to the current situation in the wake of the financial crisis. Finally, it is concluded that the vicious circle of low professionalization and high precariousness facing sociologists demands institutional action aimed at reformulating the public agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the deep and protracted recession that plagues the Greek regions, exports have shown some positive signs of resilience. This paper explores through a spatial econometric analysis of SUR models, first, the changes that occurred in exports by the (NUTS 3 level) regions for the period 2008–2012 to offer resistance against the crisis and to stimulate growth, which entail expansion of export demand, improvement in the quality of agricultural products, deeper specialization in broad low‐technology sectors and simultaneous increases in the variety inside these sectors and second, the ability of exports to transfer their growth gains to the broader economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, especially after the outbreak of the economic crisis, the phenomenon of populism has returned to the forefront. Populism is all around us, on the front pages of the newspapers, in the political repertoire, in academic papers. Politicians, journalists and researchers discuss this phenomenon, try to define it, examine its principal features and analyse its relationship with democracy. A large part of the mainstream parties and politicians have succeeded, through a strong anti-populist rhetoric, in consolidating the idea that populism is a dangerous ideology. Technocrats, mainstream media and many researchers blame the anti-establishment parties and argue that populism is an 'irrational' phenomenon that threatens politics and society. But is that really the case? In this article, we examine anti-populism after the economic collapse in Greece (2008/09) and Argentina (2001) to highlight the danger that derives from this kind of discourse. Our main goal is to find the chief characteristics of anti-populist discourse in both countries in order to emphasize its problematic and controversial perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light – whether natural or artificial – plays multiple roles in the home: both as a material enabler of everyday life and as a device for exercising a variety of social relations. The post-2008 Greek economic crisis has endangered those roles by limiting people’s ability to access or afford adequate energy services. This paper focuses on the enforced lack of illumination in the home, and the strategies and tactics undertaken by households to overcome this challenge. I connect illumination practices and discourses to the implementation of austerity, by arguing that the threat of darkness has become a tool for compelling vulnerable groups to pay their electricity bills. The evidence presented in the paper is based on two sets of interviews with 25 households (including a total of 55 adult members) living in and around Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest city, and one that has suffered severe economic consequences as a result of the crisis. I have established that the under-consumption of light is one of the most pronounced expressions of energy poverty, and as such endangers the ability to participate in the customs that define membership of society. But the emergence of activist-led amateur electricians and the symbolic and material mobilization of light for political purposes have also created multiple opportunities for resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research conducted in Greece, where, during the last seven years, an acute socio-economic crisis has led to the emergence of a number of alternative organizational forms. By foregrounding the term drasis, the unexpected unfolding of an event in a specific space and time, we discuss how these alternative forms assemble differential capacities in order to resist the neoliberal ordering of socio-spatial and economic relations. In particular, we focus on two self-organized spaces, namely, a social centre and a squatted public garden and discuss two concrete instances of drasis. We propose that drasis instigates the establishment and evolution of transformative, prefigurative organizing through three interrelated processes, namely, the formation of resistance assemblages, social learning and socio-spatial solidarity. The paper offers three propositions, suggesting that drasis provides the socio-material conditions through which new resistance formations challenge the established productive forces of society and co-produce alternative forms of civic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main focus of this study is Greek-Balkan economic cooperation during and after the economic crisis (2008), and so a comparative analysis of GDP, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) of the Balkan countries (BCs) is presented. Using relevant literature, GDP quantitative data, foreign trade and FDI are analyzed in relation to economic cooperation during the period 2008-2018. In addition, trade balance data, volume of trade, terms of trade and FDI in BCs and Greece are examined. This paper analyzes the impact of the crisis on GDP, trade balance, post-crisis evolution of FDI and the impact of the crisis on Greek foreign trade with the other BCs. Within the framework of Greek-Balkan economic cooperation, FDI development in Greece and the BCs during and after the crisis is discussed and correlated with GDP, foreign trade and FDI changes. The main findings suggest that during the early crisis years all metrics declined for all BCs, including Greece, but in the following years showed signs of recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industry sector in Greece is responsible for one-quarter of the overall total final energy consumption accounting for 3.8 Mtoe in 2015. Since 2007, a 29% decrease is noted due to the financial crisis. The goal of this paper is to provide information on the current industrial energy profile of Greece, with particular reference to the steam industry. It presents the outcomes of 10 energy audits in industries that use steam followed by a list of possible measures: insulation, installation of a deaerator unit, heat recovery, automatic blowdown system and regulation of excessive air. The proposed measures result in energy savings of 5.8 GWh/year and show that the potential of energy savings in the Greek steam industry is quite considerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries in Greece have lost much of their already limited funding due to the recent global economic crisis. It has therefore become necessary for them to seek alternative sources of income. One such strategy could be commercial advertising, which constitutes the renting of space within or outside the library or using the library's website to place ads. However, an application of commercial advertising in libraries can trigger negative reactions from library patrons. In this context, the aim of this paper is to investigate stakeholders' views regarding the use of commercial advertising by Greek libraries, using a quantitative methodology. The results reveal that commercial advertising is considered as a possible profitable strategy for Greek libraries by both respondent groups, information professionals and users, alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last eight years, Europe, and the world as general, has been experiencing a situation of sudden economic recession resulted in economic and financial crisis. According to the IMF (2009), this is the worst recession of the last decades since economies, countries and global GDP have been seriously affected. A sector of the economy that has significantly been impaired is road freight transport. The scope of this paper is to investigate the effect of this crisis on road freight transport in Greece. The analysis starts by examining global and European data and trends while presenting comparable Greek economic and freight transport data for a series of years starting in 2003. This analysis and mapping of data shows some plausible correlations between economic and freight transport indicators and identified visible patterns. The paper examines the possibility of constructing mathematical relations between tonnes or t-km of road freight and GDP for Greece, which were the only relations showing a statistically significant correlation. The overall conclusion is that the impacts on freight transport are visible but quite pronounced as freight transport volumes and output have been substantially unstable or reduced over these years and this trend is visible when mapping the relevant data as well as in more detailed statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that Syriza has remained faithful to its distinct form of left Europeanism in the post-crisis era. It aims at testing the relative importance of four factors: the party’s Eurocommunist heritage, its ideological pillars, its internal balance and party factionalism, and its transnational affiliations. In order to assess their importance, the present paper draws from on-going research applying a theoretical framework that combines the work of Johansson and Raunio (2001) with Charalambous’ (2013) communist dilemma. While the former framework provides us with the required areas of investigation, the latter focuses on the party’s mechanisms of altering salience levels in respect to its transnational affiliations. It thus pinpoints an additional level of analysis that highlights the importance of the Party of the European Left for Syriza’s unaltered stance towards the European edifice, at least for the party’s Unitary Platform that witnessed the Left Platform’s withdrawal from Syriza following Syriza’s ‘capitulation’ in July 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The economic crisis signifies a turning point for Greek national self-image. The present paper explores the ideological function of interpretative repertoires in relation to the reproduction and contestation of national identity. We focus on two basic repertoires: a victimizing and a self-blaming one. Even though connotations of victimhood are not homogenous, its association with an external enemy is very popular. This paper demonstrates that discourses of victimization are not unambiguous and solidified; they interact with self-blaming discursive patterns, thus leading to hybrid perceptions of the national self-image that are adjusted to particular political actors’ strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe in-depth a community-based social partnership, emerged in response to the financial crisis in Greece, with members from the private, public and civic sectors, using a case example of a grass-root self-organised national network.Design/methodology/approach Formal and informal interviews as well as written communication with members of the partnership mainly formed the basis for the analysis. Topics covered formation and implementation activities, outcomes, relationship issues, such as trust and links to social capital.Findings A shared community risk and a national media campaign to increase public awareness of the issue were catalysts for individuals’ sensitisation and participation in the partnership. The shared risk was the loss of community’s social cohesion, through poverty aggravated by the financial crisis. Self-organisation led to innovative relationships, whereas trust, collective action and collaboration show social capital attributes in the partnership enabling resilience development.Research limitations/implications The research contributes in the fields of community-based partnerships and engagement in building community and crisis resilience. The findings are based on a case example. More evidence is needed in order to derive generalised statements about the partnership’s contribution to crisis resilience.Practical implications The partnership has shown impact on community engagement, health and well-being.Originality/value This paper presents a partnership type for building community and crisis resilience with the case example of one such partnership in Greece, formed to alleviate community distress caused by the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greece has suffered the worst from the late 2000s global financial crisis. Despite the completion of the economic adjustment program the rate of recovery in Greece is still weak. The liquidity constraints in the Greek economy imply that the investment shock, which will accelerate its recovery rate, will be an outcome of investment inflows by privatizations and/or other opportunities arising to foreign investors (inward FDI) due to the devaluation of the assets in Greece caused by the crisis. However, the level of attracted by the Greek economy has always been well below the European Union average. This paper investigates the factors favoring inward FDI in Greece after the crisis. A survey is made by the use of a questionnaire for the collection of primary data on the activity of multinationals in Greece and non-parametric methods are used for investigating the attractiveness of the Greek market and the decision to invest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a Marxist analysis of capitalist relations of class power and the class configuration in contemporary advanced capitalist societies, the paper investigates the consequences of the recent economic crisis and of the neoliberal capitalist strategies in Greece (austerity, market liberalization and privatizations), on the one hand for the class structure of the Greek society and on the other for the potential class alliances against neoliberal agenda, focusing especially on the coalescence of practices between the working class and certain subsets of the middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a debt crisis in Greece, the causes and impacts of this crisis and possible solutions to current situation. The Greek debt crisis is one of a number of current European debt crises and is believed to have been caused by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy coupled with the incomplete economic, tax and banking unification of the European Monetary Union. Throughout this thesis the Greece is compared with another European states regarding to important macroeconomics indicators and economic policy. The aim of this paper is analyze and make a comparison which is based on the cluster analysis. First part of this paper is about reasons, which cause financial crises in Greece. Second part focuses the theoretical background of the cluster analysis and selection of economical indicators. Next part evaluate findings with cluster analysis. The conclusion cautions against high state debts and shows indispensability reforms which are related with fiscal state policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the eruption of the Greek economic crisis in 2010 and the introduction of austerity policies, Greece’s public space has become a theatre of intense political conflict in the form of social unrest, mass mobilisations, symbolic and physical clashes and political instability. This paper suggests that these developments can be understood in a productive way by drawing on a psychoanalytic understanding of loss and trauma. This framework can help us understand the transformation of a popular subject previously loyal to the political establishment into a disenchanted one, and also address the question of emotional intensities at play in this detachment. But in addition, psychoanalysis highlights the possibility of different responses to loss and the different ethical implications that these can have, which stands in contrast to accounts that see radicalisation as inherently dangerous. Far-right and left-wing responses are examined and characterised through this lens. The paper concludes that there are nuances in the left-wing responses that can meet the ethical criteria set by a psychoanalytic understanding of loss. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alongside the depressing image of closed shops as visible indicators of the crisis, migrant businesses can be found in many parts of Athens and often play a vital role in local neighbourhood markets. This paper explores the socio-spatial dimensions of Athens’ emerging migrant economies. Drawing from a recent research project combining survey and ethnographic methods on three Athenian neighbourhoods, the paper examines migrant entrepreneurship at the local level and highlights the relevance of place, politics and everyday life. We argue that the spread of immigrant entrepreneurial activity in Athens not only forms an existing part of the urban landscape, but has also become an organic part of the everyday experience of life in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My afterword engages six papers in the special issue “Archives and Anthropologies: From Histories to Futures”. It teases out particular arguments, locates common themes and explores the papers' relevance to wider debates in anthropology and visual culture. My paper particularly focuses on discussions around anthropology's analytical priorities and the position of the visual/material Vis-à-vis the social. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the rising suicide rate in Greece since the economic crisis began in 2008. By 2011, Greek and international media were reporting the Greek suicide rate as the fastest rising in Europe; dozens of “spectacular” public suicides were taken as symptoms of an “epidemic.” In this paper, I explore different accounts of this “epidemic”: statistical studies and press reports on suicide since the crisis; notes written by people who committed or attempted suicide in public during the crisis; and narratives of suicidality from psychiatric patients before the crisis, in dialogue with local psychiatric epidemiologies. These accounts summon three axes of comparison around suicide in Greece: historical difference, defined by the economic crisis and the time before; locale, contrasting the public sphere of media coverage and consumption with a particular region distinguished by its “suicidogenic” features; and evidence, moving from the public discourse on suicide to clinical ethnographic research that I conducted in northeastern Greece a decade ago. I show that each way of accounting for suicide challenges the epistemologies and evidence at work in the others; the tensions and the interactions among them are signs of indeterminacy in suicide itself, taken as an object of inquiry. In the public discourse on the Greek crisis, the many meanings of suicide have been condensed and fixed as a politics of protest. Yet, I argue, comparison among epistemologies of suicide and recognition of its indeterminacy generate a space for thinking about suicide beyond the publicity of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the emergence, operation and features of the time banks that were created during the recent financial crisis in Greece as grass-roots initiatives of different communities, and to examine their relation to the concept of “co-production” and possible relevance to foresight. Time banks are particularly interesting for the future of services: they address all sorts of services while the time-bank “value” of these different types of services does not necessarily reflect their actual value in the free market; impacts may spread from the mere coverage of people’s needs, to increased social capital and community empowerment; and some scholars consider them as flexible forms of co-production, or even as enablers of wider social change. The purpose of the paper is to examine the emergence, and features of the time banks created during the recent financial crisis in Greece as grass-roots initiatives. Design/methodology/approach – Primary information and data were gathered through eight extensive face-to-face interviews with key members of the four time banks based on a semi-structured questionnaire. The methodology also included desk research and review of the information included in time banks’ websites. The selection of these four time banks was based on the fact that they are the most active ones in Athens, which is the capital of the country gathering around 40 per cent of the Greek population and presenting the severest consequences of the financial crises in terms of unemployment, poverty, shutdown of businesses, share of people with no insurance, etc. Findings – Based on a specific analytical framework summarising the available literature, the Greek time banks are compared with each other but also in relation to the findings in the literature, where some interesting differences emerge. The paper also explores the role that foresight can plan in the development of alternative initiatives like time banks. The interesting conclusion is that foresight can help time banks as much as time banks can help foresight in upgrading its processes to deal with challenges of the twenty-first century. Research limitations/implications – The research focuses on the four most active time banks in Athens. While this selection is justified, future research would be good to include all the time banks in Greece. Social implications – The paper explores how time banks in Greece emerged as well as how they can further develop. This is of direct relevance to society as time banks are by default a community initiative. Originality/value – Time banks in Greece have not been previously studied. Second, time banks in general were never linked to approaches like foresight. This becomes increasingly important in examining possible approaches toward more sustainable and resilient societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is motivated by recent concerns, prompted by the recent financial crisis, that regulatory capital guidelines on loan loss reserves can generate dysfunctional outcomes and, moreover, by the fact that the Greek bonds held by the banks have an important impact on the risk level of the bank portfolio. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate risk into bank efficiency and to provide a snapshot of the efficiency profile of the Greek banking industry. Efficiency is measured by means of a satisficing data envelopment analysis (DEA) model in which the financial risk is proxied by credit risk provisions and by the participation of banks in the Private Sector Involvement (PSI), a controllable and an uncontrollable factor by the bank management, respectively. The results of the proposed probabilistic DEA model derived through the Monte-Carlo simulation are compared with the results of the respective deterministic model. As the constructed stochastic frontier screens further some of the ‘best-in-class’ banks, the merit of the proposed metric is evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well documented that post-1990s migrant labour supported Southern European families over a period of social and economic change which challenged their capacity to mobilise and accrue welfare resources. Drawing on empirical research in Greece, this paper explores the trajectory of a particular group of migrant care workers who moved on from the insecurity of the informal labour market of domestic work to work as exclusive bank nurses in hospitals. It reveals how during the crisis these care workers seek refuge back to the informal labour market where their journey started, and discusses what this trajectory reversal implies on a theoretical level. Are we witnessing change in the prevalent pattern of migrant incorporation or rather its continuation under a familiar, and perhaps more precarious, ground? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the similarities and differences between the Greek (2009-...) and the Mexican (1994-1995) crisis. Both of them had regional impacts, in Europe in the first case and in South America in the second case. After the crisis, important decisions that were taken changed the way economic policy is made in both countries. Measures taken to resolve the crises involved several key players, both at the national and the supranational level. In both crises, Greece and Mexico received a number of recommendations to be applied in their economic policies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact and role of national and supranational key players involved in the resolution of both crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current financial crisis has important consequences for small national research systems of the European periphery, where in some cases it leads to reform and significant downsizing of public R&D efforts. This paper develops a normative theoretical framework for guiding decisions concerning reform of R&D systems in periods of financial crises. The aim is to provide guidance for the reform of Greek R&D system and lessons for other national R&D systems faced with financial crises. Contrary to what is generally regarded as ‘perceived wisdom’, this paper argues that periods of crisis are not suitable for major reforms of R&D systems, even though they may seem to provide political opportunities for reform. Crises exacerbate the costs of R&D reforms and restrict the potential for benefits. Crises, as the discussion of the case of Greece shows, can undermine the trust between the government and the research community, generating important barriers to reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contains my responses to the papers included in the present EJPC issue on the Greek economic crisis. My critical investigation of these papers revealed the presence of either a well-disguised individualism or a naive collectivism in the authors' attempts to examine the function of psychotherapy in the midst of the current economic crisis. I suggest that one should keep alive the tension between the 'ideological' and 'radical' functions of psychotherapy by adopting a dialectical analysis which could combine both psychological and sociological explanations of the current crisis without relinquishing either or reducing one to the other [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the need for multicultural competencies has been well documented, very few studies show the effect of the economic crisis or other socio-political events on the therapeutic relationship. Furthermore, usually studies focus on the need to be aware of 'the other' and research on the implications of same-culture dyads is scant. The case of Greece is particularly interesting because of the peculiarities of the Greek national identity and its connection to the country's socio-political past. Furthermore, the economic crisis together with the social and political upheaval has had a significant impact on the Greek identity. We argue that practitioners in Greece are products of a mono-cultural society and they should be empowered to develop awareness of their personal and cultural identity in order to be able to freely interact with the identities of others. This paper makes specific suggestions about increasing awareness and reflexivity in psychotherapeutic practice and training programmes. The authors highlight the need for research to investigate the multifaceted impact of the economic crisis on the identity of the practitioner and the therapeutic relationship in Greece. We hope that this paper invites further discussions among Greek and international practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the factors that affect multi-segments automobile sales in Greece. Various relevant quantitative techniques have been employed, such as stationarity, causality and cointegration. A Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model was also developed and long-term impacts of the different variables of interest on car sales have been estimated through generalized impulse response functions (GIRF). The impact of the current financial crisis on the Greek automobile market was also taken into account. The results show that fuel prices Granger cause total car sales. The results also indicate the absence of long run cointegrating relationships among the variables. The full blown model shows that demand for new automobiles depends on the existing social, financial and political conditions of the local economy and that the various shocks observed have a temporary medium-run character on car sales, whereas the system is found to be stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, economic resilience has become a popular term in both theory and policy practice. This interest was triggered by the fact that some regional economies were extremely vulnerable, while others have managed to overcome, more or less effectively, the worse consequences of the current economic crisis. Within this context, questions arise regarding the role that policies at both the national and subnational levels can play in shaping regional economic resilience. Although high in the academic and political agenda, understanding the policy and governance aspects of resilience still remains a relatively underdeveloped area. The paper contributes to this debate focusing on an area which has been most severely hit by crises, the Region of West Macedonia, in Greece. The case study builds on the historical trajectory of the region in order to explain how different types of policies have influenced the ability of West Macedonia to respond to economic slumps and crises of the last 30 years. Evidence suggests that national protectionist policies largely explain not only resilience of the region against previous crises, but also its vulnerability towards the still ongoing economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grassroots responses and alternatives to austerity that have emerged in Athens and Greece call for a re-thinking of the recent neoliberal crisis through articulations of contestation 'from below'. This paper addresses this yet nascent theoretical debate through the notion of 'urban solidarity spaces', focusing on the spatiality of counter-austerity politics that emerges in and out of places and expands across urban space and beyond. From survival tactics grounded in Athenian neighbourhoods, such as local solidarity initiatives; to solidarity structures and cooperatives; and broader strategies of transformation and alternatives, such as the formation of a solidarity economy. These aim to constitute an empowering process of solidarity-making 'from below', and open up spaces for the practice of bottom-up democratic politics vis-à-vis austerity, a 'politics of fear' and crisis. The arguments raised here methodologically draw on activist ethnographic research in the 'Athens of crisis', between 2012 and 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study realized in a Greek model high school as an extracurricular animation-making project during an after-school club. The student-participants were 20 volunteers between 16 and 18 years old. The researcher studied the affective function of moving image literacy, i.e. the feelings and emotions experienced by the student-participants during animation-viewing, animation-making as well as the affective engagement they wished to cause to their audience. Their creation was a short animation film entitled ‘The Society’, symbolically dealing with the issue of the Greek economic crisis from a social viewpoint. The affective function studied is considered as one of the benefits of moving image literacy, whether this literacy is applied within a subject of the curriculum, is taught as a subject per se or is applied in an extracurricular project addressing all age groups. So, this case study shows the range of feelings students can experience during an animation-making project and how their emotional involvement contributes to the success of the pedagogic process. Its aim is to encourage teachers to use moving image literacy as a means of affective involvement of their students with the subject taught, an aspect that has not been widely explored so far. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the path of an important reform of the Greek Citizenship Code, starting from the initial introduction of the Citizenship Law in 2010, the public debate and reactions that followed leading to its partial annulation as unconstitutional in 2012, and finally, the developments until its restoration with a new law in 2016. This initiative introducing radical reforms for the Greek context took place in the midst of the public debt crisis, and thus has not been discussed accordingly. Until then, the issue of Greek nationality represented anon-issuein the political agenda of the country, since the issue of citizenship was considered ‘nationally sensitive’. The paper examines how such a reform is pushed forward during extremely difficult conditions, an unprecedented economic and political crisis, coupled by the largest refugee wave in the recent history of the country, having still an uncertain future/outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is poorly performing economies like Greece that have become synonymous with sovereign debt crises in recent times, other more deeply indebted economies remain exempt from such representations. This paper builds on an argument made elsewhere that sovereign debt crises are implicated in the expansion of colonial power through austerity, in both their overt and covert manifestations. While the 2015 Greek referendum in a climate of austerity attempted to cover over the imperializing will of the European Union through the referendum device, in Australia the referendum campaign seeking ‘recognition’ of Aboriginal people in the Constitution effaces the foundational debts of dispossession that structure both economy and sovereignty. While the referendums in both crises are invoked to resolve different legal, economic and cultural issues, they are indissociably connected in that they operate to legitimize the expansion of global colonial power. Referendums more generally are becoming increasingly visible as governance devices and yet their cultural-legal and racial meanings are yet to be tracked. I begin this task by bringing together a range of heterogeneous texts and literatures. By analysing and interconnecting these seemingly disparate texts, I argue that the Greek and Australian referendums are both techniques of colonial power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main claim of this paper is that the recent Greek economic crisis is not the sole or indeed the major cause of the current predicament, but is itself an outcome of a more long-term ‘cultural’, social and political crisis. Although current debates tend to overemphasize economic considerations and international factors, the view of the author is that, although important, these factors, when discussed in isolation, tend to conceal rather than disclose the ‘meaning’ of a way of life that is in crisis. Therefore, instead of discussing nomological causes, this paper tries to point towards the content of beliefs and various articulations of beliefs that have shaped everyday conduct, and highlight social and political practices that have constituted social life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explains and evaluates the effects of the developing crisis on the mobility of third-country nationals in Greece and other South European political economies. In doing so it explores the mobility of these migrants within the context of the informal economic activity in which many such migrants have been involved. The paper exposes the distance separating the law and the actual enforcement of fundamental employment- and mobility-related rights of irregular migrants in Greece and other southern European countries. It identifies the significance of the familistic welfare regime of the European South in framing migrants' characteristics and their consequent mobility in the region. The article argues that the familistic welfare regime of the host country is inextricably linked to migrants' employment trajectories and fundamentally affects the strategies that migrants have developed in order to protect themselves in lieu of effective rights regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An infrastructural gap (IG) emerged after the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 and it refers to the difficulty of the state and the private sector in sustaining the level of infrastructural networks in the Western world. Yet, infrastructures comprise the realm where the state or the market materialize a great proportion of the social contract. Citizens therefore often experience IG as a challenge of the entire political paradigm. Nevertheless, as research in the country that is at the center of the current euro-crisis—Greece—records, we have novel and innovative forms of civil activity focused on the IG. Such activity, applying principles of self-organization and peer-to-peer relationships, along with practices of social solidarity and ideals of commons, attempts to address IG in innovative ways. However, such practices call for theoretical and empirical innovations as well, in order to overcome the social sciences’ traditional understandings of infrastructures. This paper—based on the inaugural professorial lecture I gave in acceptance of the Chair in Social Anthropology at the Vrije University Amsterdam—seeks to initiate a framework for understanding this shift in the paradigm of infrastructures’ governance and function, along with the newly emerging infrastructural turn in socio-cultural anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the Athens Olympic Games and the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). It aims to test: the effect of the Athens 2004 Olympics on the general index of the ASE; the impact of the Olympic Games 2004 to the sponsors' prices traded on the ASE (based on three National sponsors and one International sponsor); and the effect of the Greek Olympic Champions (winners' effect) on the course of the ASE. Design methodology approach -- This paper captures financial time series characteristics by employing an AR(1)-GARCH(1,1) model with generalized error distribution (GED). The paper uses daily closing prices for the General ASE index and four Grand Sponsors listed in the ASE (Coca-Cola, Alpha Bank, OTE, and Cosmote) over the period 19 January 1996 to 20 December 2005. Findings -- The results show no effect on the general ASE index, but a positive effect on the OTE (Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation) index. Also, the results show a positive effect of Greek Medallists on the ASE index and two National sponsors, Alpha Bank and OTE. Research limitations implications -- Further research should investigate the impact of other mega sporting events (Mundial, European Championships) on the course of international stock markets using high-frequency datasets and models. Practical implications -- The findings are strongly recommended to financial managers and investors dealing with Greek stock indices. Originality value -- The contribution of this paper is to examine the above hypotheses on the relationship between the Athens Olympic Games and the ASE using a large sample data, and a Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model with GED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges that the current economic crisis has posed for Greek public and municipal libraries. Design/methodology/approach – This is a viewpoint paper discussing the past, present and future directions that Greek public and municipal libraries have adopted or should adopt in the context of the present economic crisis. Findings – Greek public and municipal libraries ought to see the economic crisis as a challenge for development, improvement and the promotion of their presence and role in the community which they serve. Originality/value – The paper discusses the factors affecting the past and present situation relating to public and municipal libraries in Greece and addresses the future challenges for promoting development and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the economic crisis of recent years there is a wider discussion on issues of employment and unemployment in Greece. Development, attracting new investments, creating new jobs, unemployment rates, brain drain are some of the issues that interests the political, economic and social carriers of the country. This paper presents data on employment and unemployment in Greece for the last decade. Under this framework, data are presented and the relevant findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the past is used to interrogate the present under conditions of social and economic crisis. It focuses on the ways national history and personal historicity blended in the media frenzy and public reactions generated in the summer of 2014 by archaeological discoveries in a burial mound in Northern Greece that captured the attention of the nation for many months. During a time of intense debate over the privatization of national resources, growing demands for Nazi war-crime reparations, and increasing pauperization, popular speculation over the mound as a hiding place for priceless treasures was very often informed by mistrust towards the state, its representatives, and its experts. I look into history and culture to investigate how the past in conditions of crisis and uncertainty can weigh heavy in peoples’ identity claims, social demands, and moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]