The crisis has left a crippling impact on Greece’s economy and society. The post-bailout path to recovery will be steep. The completion of Greece’s bailout programmes leaves no room for celebration. Greece has lost a quarter of its GDP from 2008, unemployment is at 20 per cent, one out of three Greeks are below the poverty threshold, youth unemployment affects…
“The important thing is for productivity to rise so that wages can increase,” Pagoulatos says. “During most of the crisis period, many of the gains in competitiveness from wage compression were canceled by other factors, such as the higher tax burden and social security costs, energy costs and cost of credit.” This caused thousands of companies to either close up…
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Greece brain drain hampers recovery from economic crisis Angeliki Tziaka moved to the UK soon after the Greek government began cutting pensions and public sector wages in the first bailout programme agreed with international creditors in 2010. She felt the choice was clear: work abroad or risk a long spell of unemployment at home. “I’d recently graduated in medicine and…
George Pagoulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, says that in the end the country’s creditors may have to lower their expectations for how much Greece can save. He thinks lower surpluses plus better economic growth from the pro-business reforms could be the key to make debt sustainable. “It doesn’t mean that tax evasion has been…