Publisher's Synopsis
The Greek economy has assumed a significance out of all proportion to its size, but there has been an absence of any holistic assessment within a global and European perspective. Starting with a panoramic view of Greece's socio-economic development, this book explains how historic policy debates have been dominated by "catch-up" discourse and the underlying reasons - structural, political, ideological and geographical - that have prevented Greece from matching the performance of major Western industrial countries.
This new volume in the World Economies series takes that story forward with a systematic survey of the Greek economy assessing the impact of EU membership and entry into the eurozone, of Greece's geopolitical position and of the deflationary post-financial crash policies of harsh austerity determined by the process of European integration. Closely attending to the effects on Greece's population - with 57 per cent unemployed or of pensionable age - the authors explain how immigration flows and related problems engulfing the eurozone, connect to war economies and a global geopolitical and economic shift from the Euro-Atlantic heartland to Asia.
The authors show that a rounded overview of recent Greek economic history not only extends our understanding of an unexpectedly prominent part of Europe's economy but also illuminates wider debates about the eurozone and global political economy and even the future fate of longstanding geopolitical and state rivalries in the Balkans and the Near East.
