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1 – 10 of over 4000Hit by an unprecedented financial crisis, the Greek society has been also swept away by an acute political crisis, rising political polarisation and social unrest. At the…
Abstract
Hit by an unprecedented financial crisis, the Greek society has been also swept away by an acute political crisis, rising political polarisation and social unrest. At the same time, over the last decade, Greece has faced an unparalleled state of emergency, with thousands of refugees and immigrants entering every year and remaining in the country, often in extremely difficult living conditions leading to ‘an exceptional crisis within the crisis’. In fact, during the recent years, immigration and the ‘refugee crisis’ have been among the most controversial topics on the Greek policy agenda and one of the principal issues that shapes public discourse and raises the most questions about social cohesion and the fundamental values of the Greek society. Media representations of the refugee and migrant ‘crisis’ have played a significant role in how this controversial issue is presented in the Greek public discourse as well as in how people perceive and respond to it. Within this context and having as a starting point the theoretical approach of peace journalism, this chapter explores the ways in which four national Greek newspapers portrayed immigration within different periods of the Greek crisis between January 2011 and September 2015. Research results reveal two different periods in the analysed news stories, one between 2011 and 2014, when immigration was portrayed as a ‘domestic problem’ and the other, in 2015, when the situation was designated as a ‘European refugee crisis’. In both cases, however, it was evident that immigration was positioned high on the agenda of the Greek newspapers, despite major political events taking place within the same periods. Findings were presented and discussed on four different but interrelated levels: immigration (1) as a source of conflict and polarisation, (2) as a political issue, (3) through securitisation and victimhood and, ultimately, (4) through a ‘journalism of conventions’ lens, with very important consequences on the quality of information (extensive lack of solutions related to immigration and asylum issues, absence of refugees' voice, insufficient context, among others).
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The aim of the paper is to present a review of the fiscal imbalances and debt crisis in Greece and identify the possible links with the recent developments in the Greek…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the paper is to present a review of the fiscal imbalances and debt crisis in Greece and identify the possible links with the recent developments in the Greek property market.
Design/methodology/approach
The author follows a non-technical approach to discuss a number of factors that have contributed to the fiscal crisis that Greece has been experiencing since October 2009. The author critically analyses both the “internal” causes of the deteriorating fiscal stance of the Greek economy (that is the prolonged macroeconomic imbalances that the Greek economy faces and the credibility problem of macroeconomic policy) and the “external” factors that might have contributed to the Greek fiscal crisis (that is implications of the recent financial turmoil and the timing of the response of Europe to the Greek fiscal crisis). The author then studies the extent to which fiscal imbalances and the debt crisis have affected the Greek property sector.
Findings
The analysis indicates that the current fiscal stance of the Greek economy and the Greek property market crisis are intertwined.
Practical implications
The author believes that these results are useful, make a contribution to the existing knowledge and provide some evidence that current economic recession has a considerable adverse effect on the property sector in Greece.
Originality/value
One of the distinctive features of the paper is to critically discuss the direct and indirect effects of the prolonged macroeconomic imbalances on the Greek property sector. To the best of the author's knowledge, none of the existing studies in this area provides systematic treatment of the Greek fiscal crisis as a contributory factor in explaining the current crisis in the Greek property market.
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Dionisis Chionis, Ioannis Pragidis and Panagiotis Schizas
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the determinants of the ten-year Greek bond yield in both pre- and post-crisis period that caused the unprecedented event, a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to uncover the determinants of the ten-year Greek bond yield in both pre- and post-crisis period that caused the unprecedented event, a country member of the Euro area, not to be able to tap the market. In doing so, following the recent literature, the authors employ two major set of variables, market driven and macroeconomic variables and the authors find two classes of results. Among others, debt to GDP ratio, deficit, inflation and unemployment, play a more significant role as determinants of the ten-years Greek bond yield during the crisis and second, the ten-years yield exceeds that fundamentals that price in. Moreover, the authors explicitly test for the impact of speculation on the yield. These results are in line with other empirical studies and shed line to the dramatic evolution of the bond yields in terms of fiscal consolidation era as it is in Greece. Since the Greek debt crisis is ongoing more than five years, policy makers should make substantial changes in their macro projections taking under consideration more the variables of inflation and unemployment, and release a viable concrete plan of debt relief, which among other, secures the success of the macro projections.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical study on Greek debt crisis applying both macroeconomics and market indicators in separated estimations.
Findings
Debt to GDP ratio, deficit, inflation and unemployment among others, play a more significant role as determinants of the ten-years Greek bond yield during the crisis than had before and second, during the crisis ten-years yield is above the price that fundamentals would imply.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge it is the first time that the authors study the Greek debt crisis applying fundamental and market factors.
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Austerity in Greece has produced the ostensibly counterproductive effect of throwing the country into a deeper depression and rendering it more difficult to repay its…
Abstract
Austerity in Greece has produced the ostensibly counterproductive effect of throwing the country into a deeper depression and rendering it more difficult to repay its debts. I address this apparent paradox by examining both the integration of Greece into the European Monetary Union and post-crisis austerity measures with a particular focus on the Greek credit system. I do so by employing a historical materialist framework focusing on Marx’s concept of ‘fictitious capital’, capital not backed by a commodity transaction, but by a claim on future value. I argue that, while the crisis is overdetermined, one hitherto unexplored dimension is the rapid expansion of the Greek credit system in the 1990s and 2000s. More specifically, Greek banks expanded to neighbouring countries, and borrowing by households and firmed spiked dramatically after Greece adopted the Euro, but a number of domestic political-economic factors acted as drags to this process. In this context, I argue that the crisis has served as an opportunity to impose a radically accelerated restructuring of the Greek economy in line with the ideal neoliberal utopia. This can be understood as one of the three responses to a crisis of fictitious capital: internal devaluation, asset devaluation or upward. However, the success of this project is far from guaranteed, so far the austerity project pursued by the troika has failed to replace the old Greek balance of social forces that have dominated the post-junta political economy of Greece.
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The Greek debt crisis (2009–2018) was an event that received unprecedented media attention worldwide. The media reproduced a highly negative image of Greece, addressing…
Abstract
The Greek debt crisis (2009–2018) was an event that received unprecedented media attention worldwide. The media reproduced a highly negative image of Greece, addressing the crisis in exceptionalist terms, usually under a moralistic and culturalist explanatory framework. Drawing on earlier research, this chapter focusses on the culturalist discourses developed by popular Greek mainstream news media, of conservative and liberal political orientation, such as Kathimerini, Athens Voice and Protagon.gr. Through what is understood as a ‘self-orientalising’ process, such media tend to reproduce the neo-orientalist hegemonic crisis and austerity discursive construction, as enunciated by the EU's political and economic establishment. Under this lens, austerity emerges as a modernising project that would presumably correct Greece's irregularities and would make Greece European and economically competitive for global capitalism. The period studied concerns the years of the crisis between 2010 and 2015. The analysis discloses the classist underpinnings of such discursive repertoires and their antipolitical and antidemocratic character. The analysis also discusses the disciplinary effects of such media practices, which mystify austerity and the processes of expropriation it unfolds, and passivises civic culture, and counterhegemonic resistances, by promoting a collective ‘self-bashing’ strategy.
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Nashat Mahmoud Jaradt and Ijaz Ur Rehman
This research aims to focus on what has happened in light of the Greece legal crisis in terms of international contracts and what legal situations have arisen.
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to focus on what has happened in light of the Greece legal crisis in terms of international contracts and what legal situations have arisen.
Design/methodology/approach
This research focuses on what has happened in light of the Greek legal crisis in terms of international contracts and what legal situations have arisen. The overall situation in relation to international contracts and risk mitigation is discussed to analyze the efforts that have been made. The state of affairs in the country with regard to facilitating financial trade and enabling Greeks to send payments abroad or at the rate they need to is also explored.
Findings
The effects of financial crisis on international trade contracts as they relate to commercial businesses without taking into consideration the wider contractual obligations that Greece, as a country, have already defaulted on. The crux of the current crisis is the fact that Greece did not stick to the commitments it made to the European Union when it joined the eurozone and took on euro as their currency, replacing the drachma. It is important to understand that due to the scope of the economic crisis in the Greece, it is not simply the other contractual party’s creditworthiness and trustworthiness that are at issue, it is their ability to keep any promises in whatever climate arises in their country.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on the financial crisis in Greek. Further research is needed to investigate the applicability of the findings in different contexts.
Originality/value
The study findings are believed to be valuable for international commercial contracts with regard to the Greek debt crisis in discussing the financial legal situation, facilitating trade and enabling Greeks to send payments abroad or at the rate they need. The study contributes to a better understanding of international commercial contract system.
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Crisis in journalism is a widely discussed and controversial topic in Greece since 2009 when economic recession afflicted the Greek society. However, the last decade of…
Abstract
Crisis in journalism is a widely discussed and controversial topic in Greece since 2009 when economic recession afflicted the Greek society. However, the last decade of financial hardships and ownership changes in the Greek media sector (2009–2019) gave rise to a widening of perception on the part of journalists of what really crisis stands for when it comes to their profession. Based on 25 in-depth interviews with Greek leading news media professionals from all types of media outlets (press, television, radio and news websites), the present research describes how journalists perceive, assess and manage the crisis of their profession in today's networked media landscape, characterised by unprecedented phenomena such as the rise of churnalism, post truth journalism and fake news in the context of new trends with regard to how the Greek audience is seeking information and consuming news. While existing research on journalism profession has tended to emphasise the conversion of journalist into a multitasked employee towards audience members who treat journalism with suspicion, this chapter focusses on to what extent journalists by themselves are critical of their profession's vulnerabilities such as the lack of genuine investigative journalism, alienation from the actual reporting based on primary material and manipulation of media professionals within an unstable market. The research gives insights into journalists' opinions and attitudes with regard to the symptoms indicating that journalism in Greece is suffering from chronic and acute crises related to the extraction and dissemination of news, the relationship of journalists with media owners as well as the operation of the media market.
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Inês Prates Pereira and Sérgio Lagoa
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the co-movements between the Portuguese, Greek, Irish and German government bond markets after the subprime crisis (2007 to 2013)…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the co-movements between the Portuguese, Greek, Irish and German government bond markets after the subprime crisis (2007 to 2013), with a special focus on the European sovereign debt crisis. It aims to assess the existence of contagion between the Portuguese, Greece and Irish bond markets and to explore the phenomenon of flight-to-quality from the Portuguese and Greek bond markets to the German market.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is undertaken using a DCC-GARCH model with daily data for 10-year yield government bonds. The change in correlation from the stable periods to the crisis periods is used to identify contagion or flight-to-quality.
Findings
Results suggest that there was contagion between the Greek and Portuguese markets, and to a lesser extent between the Irish and Portuguese markets. During most of the identified crisis periods, there are evident flight-to-quality flows from the Portuguese and Greek bond markets to the German market.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature by applying the methodology DCC-GARCH to several crisis episodes for the analysis of contagion and flight-to-quality during the European sovereign debt crisis.
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