Pathways to a universal basic pension in Greece

Although basic pension had for years failed to catch the imagination of policy makers in Greece, it was suddenly brought to the agenda in the context of the severe crisis raging since November 2009. In May 2010 the government committed to a harsh austerity programme, aiming at fiscal consolidation, in return for a rescue package easing the sovereign debt crisis. The July 2010 pension reform, a key provision of the austerity programme, provided for the introduction of a near-universal basic pension from 2015. The paper attempts to explain why, paradoxically, the crisis made more realistic a universal basic pension in Greece. We argue, firstly, that social insurance pensions may be ripe for path-breaking reform if heavily subsidised in a non-transparent way, and, secondly, that any progress towards basic income is likely to be gradual, uneven and specific to the national policy context.Universal basic pension, Greece, economic crisis, 2010 reform

Three Essays on the European Sovereign Debt Crisis with a Special Focus on Greece

This dissertation consists of three chapters where I examine several aspects of the European sovereign debt crisis. The first chapter focuses on systemic risk. Following the financial crisis of 2007-08, both in academic as well as policy circles, much of the research has focused toward the systemic importance of financial institutions. Parallel to that research, but to somewhat lesser extent, there have been improvements in our understanding of how risk is transmitted from the financial system to the real economy. This chapter investigates a related yet distinct manifestation of systemic risk, namely systemic sovereign risk. Using data on sovereign credit default swap spreads from 11 euro member countries the study seeks to examine how the sovereign risk of one member country can affect others, as well as the overall impact in the system. The proposed work is based on the approach of Adrian and Brunnermeier (2010), used to assess systemic risk contributions among financial institutions. Focusing on sovereigns rather than financial institutions, this work will expand a small but growing body of literature examining the recent European sovereign debt crisis. In the second chapter I present a brief overview of the stylized facts for the Greek economy starting from the period after the end of the military dictatorship and the transition to democracy up until early 2016. In the third chapter I revisit the issue of fiscal sustainability in Greece in a retrospective framework, meaning that our interest lies in evaluating the sustainability of past fiscal policies and whether these can lead to a sustainable fiscal path. My empirical analysis uses annual data from 1970 to 2015 from a single source (AMECO). The econometric methodology is divided into two parts. In the first part, I focus on the sustainability of government debt using unit root tests that allow for structural breaks. In the second part, I test for cointegration between government revenues and expenditures with two procedures, namely the Bounds test of Pesaran and Shin and Johansen\u27s test. The results from both the unit root tests and the cointegration tests indicate Greek fiscal policy is unsustainable. In order to account for structural breaks, I employ the methodology of Bai (1997) and Bai and Perron (1998) and incorporate the breaks when testing for cointegration between government revenues and expenditures. The methodology employs the Dynamic OLS framework of Stock and Watson (1993). Even when I account for structural breaks, I find no evidence of strong form sustainability between the two series. However, my results do not reject the weak form sustainability of Quintos (1995). I argue that evidence of weak form sustainability for Greece can be interpreted as a higher risk of unsustainability, which can be used to explain Greece\u27s current fiscal distress

Distributional implications of the crisis in Greece in 2009 - 2012

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece since 2009 is having an unprecedented impact in terms of job and income losses, and is widely perceived to have a comparably significant effect in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an assessment of whether (and to what extent) the latter is the case. More specifically, we use the European tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD in order to quantify the impact of the austerity (i.e. fiscal consolidation policies) and the recession (i.e. negative developments in the wider economy) on the distribution of incomes in 2009-2012, and estimate how the burden of the crisis has been shared across income groups. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of our research

Nowcasting: Estimating developments in the risk of poverty and income distribution in 2013 and 2014

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is one of the three indicators used for monitoring progress towards the Europe 2020 poverty and social exclusion reduction target. Timeliness of this indicator is crucial for monitoring of the social situation and of the effectiveness of tax and benefit policies. However, partly due to the complexity of EU-SILC data collection, estimates of the number of people at risk of poverty are published with a significant delay. This paper extends and updates previous work on estimating ('nowcasting') indicators of poverty risk using the tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD. The model's routines are enhanced with additional adjustments to the EU-SILC based input data in order to capture changes in the employment characteristics of the population since the data were collected. The nowcasting method is applied to seventeen EU Member States. AROP rates are estimated up to 2014 for ten countries and 2013 for the remaining seven countries. The performance of the method is assessed by comparing the predictions with actual EU-SILC indicators for the years for which the latter are available

Disney\u27s Portrayal of Nonhuman Animals in Animated Films Between 2000 and 2010

This paper used the constant comparative method to examine the 12 animated features released by Disney between 2000 and 2010 for: (1) their representation of nonhuman animals (NHAs) and the portrayal of race, class, gender, and speciesism within this representation, (2) the ways they describe the relationship between humans and NHAs, and (3) whether they promote an animal rights perspective. Three major themes were identified: NHAs as stereotypes, family, and human/NHA dichotomy. Analysis of these themes revealed that Disney’s animated features promote speciesism and celebrate humanity’s superiority by justifying the subordination of NHAs to human agency. Furthermore, while Disney’s representation of NHAs remains largely anthropocentric, most of its animated features do not reflect the tenets of animal rights

The distributional impact of the crisis in Greece

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related factors: on the one hand, the austerity measures taken to reduce fiscal deficits; on the other hand, the wider recession. Using the European tax-benefit model EUROMOD we attempt to quantify the distributional implications of both. With respect to the austerity measures, we focus on the changes introduced in spring 2010 affecting income tax, pension benefits and public sector pay. With respect to the wider recession, we model the effects of rising unemployment and inflation, as well as of lower earnings for self-employed workers and for employees of private firms. In simulating the impact of these changes on the distribution of incomes (and in estimating how the total burden of the crisis is shared across income groups), we take into account tax evasion and benefit non take up. We end by discussing the methodological pitfalls and policy implications of our research

Distributional implications of tax evasion and the crisis in Greece

The current Greek crisis and the government's fiscal consolidation effort have elevated tax evasion to one of the most crucial policy issues in the domestic debate. The paper attempts to shed light on one aspect of the phenomenon, namely its distributional implications. We compare a large panel data sample of personal income tax returns in 2006-2010 (incomes earned in 2005-2009) with data from the European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions of the same years. We show that the deviation of incomes between the two data sources is greater in the case of farming and self-employment income. Based on these findings we then calculate stylised factors of income under-reporting by income source. These factors are fed into a tax-benefit microsimulation model to provide tentative estimates of the size and distribution of income tax evasion in Greece in 2009. We estimate income under-reporting at 12.2%, resulting in a shortfall in personal income tax receipts of 29.7%. The paper shows that the effects of tax evasion in Greece are higher income inequality and much lower progressivity of the income tax system