The Walsh contract for central bankers proves optimal after all!

A recent paper argues that the Walsh linear inflation contract does not prove optimal when the government concerns itself about the cost of the central bank contract (Candel-Sánchez & Campoy-Miñarro, 2004). This result relies on assuming that the participation constraint does not represent an effective constraint on the central banker’s decision. We show that the Walsh linear inflation contract does produce the optimal outcome, even when the government cares about the cost of the contract, assuming that the participation constraint holds.     

Interviewing retired cigarette smugglers

Based on my experience of conducting an ethnographic study with the Kurdish community in a town in the North East of England I offer a reflection on interviewing three retired cigarette smugglers, who operated in Greece in 2002 and 2003. A reflection on my experiences in this research process is provided with a reference to the absolute and relative value of the (data from the) interviews conducted.

On the drivers of the fertility rebound

Economic Change and Restructuring - This paper investigates empirically the fertility rebound in low- and high-income OECD countries for the period 1970 to 2016. The focus is on the turning points...     

The early development of the soviet government bureaucracy: Center,localities, nationality areas

The article presents and appraises the innovative performance of Greece from the 1990s to the present and argues that Greece's economic strategy up to now has had little if anything to do with entrepreneurship and innovation. It focuses on two new groundbreaking reform initiatives proposed by the ministries of development and education, that provide, for the first time, the dynamics that could enable the country's economy to overcome some of its crippling dysfunctions and steer it towards entrepreneurship, innovation, and business clusters. The article concludes that where public administration economic strategies and public universities have failed, privately owned universities and the newly proposed entrepreneurial parks could finally guide the economy towards the right path.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.     

Entertainment starts with an E: the ecstasy market in Greece

The purpose of this article is to provide an account of the social organisation of the ecstasy market in Greece. Concern about ecstasy production, distribution and use in Greece has risen since ecstasy appeared in the country in the early to mid-1990s, and continues to be fuelled by media reports which reinforce the perception that there are huge profits for traders. Moreover, the Greek authorities have adopted a ‘war on drug’ rhetoric when it comes to ecstasy trafficking. Thus, the fact that such mentalities are commonplace, while the knowledge deficit about the particular market remains gaping, makes it an imperative to examine the structure and dynamics of the ecstasy market in the country. We aim here to provide an account of the ‘extent’ and nature of the ecstasy market in Greece as well as a presentation of the ‘actors’ involved. We also explicitly focus on the issue of price of ecstasy tablets in the country, which we regard as key to the understanding of the logic of this particular market. Our investigation of various aspects of the market concludes with a number of more systematic observations regarding the particular business.     

‘Are the ‘others’ coming?’: Evidence on ‘alien conspiracy’ from three illegal markets in Greece

In the early 1990s Greece accepted a large number of immigrants from a variety of contexts. Since then ‘organised criminality’ has become an important aspect of the immigration nexus in the country, and ethnicity has been viewed as an extremely important-if not the primary–explanatory variable. Simultaneously, there has been very little empirical research on ‘organised crime’ in Greece in general and ‘organised crime’ and ethnicity in particular. The purpose of this article, which is based on previous research that the author has conducted on three illegal markets in Greece (a. migrant smuggling business, b. the cigarette black market, and c. the market of stolen cars and car parts), is to show the extent to which these illegal markets are controlled by foreign nationals, and establish whether there is such thing as an ‘alien conspiracy’ in the particular country.