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This paper examines local initiatives for a sports stadium-centered economic development project in Athens, Greece within the framework of urban political theories. This project was not successful for the proponents, which in itself makes a crucial issue as most stadium projects are successful in the US, where most stadium research has been conducted. The local growth coalition (LGC) concept is used as a template for understanding this Athenian project. In this case, the coalition was strong yet ineffective. In any LGC, ineffectiveness may result from various structural factors that are unrelated to the coalition’s internal organizational or institutional composition. In this case, the key structural factor was a judicial decision by the Supreme Administrative Court of Greece that severely impeded the LGC’s ultimate goals. This paper also briefly compares judicial decisions in the US and Greece regarding new private sports stadia as projects for the “public good.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of transport networks requires public investments, in terms of government expenditure, on several types of (road, rail, port, airport, and urban public transport) infrastructure, including their operational and maintenance services. This paper develops and implements a system-wide spatioeconomic model to analyze the expenditure competition among different types of investment in the Greek transport sector. The suggested approach can offer valuable insight into the economies of scale and synergies associated with a particular transport investment. It is also extended to consider how such investment determinants as population concentration, economic growth, and political considerations at the prefecture level affect expenditure allocation to different types of transport infrastructure. The results indicate the statistical significance of scale effects of transport investment, substitution effects of road investment on other types of transport investment, and political factors on different types of transport investment. Airport investment relates to the most significant synergistic effects on expenditures in other types of public transport facilities. Thus, policy makers must take these fiscal externalities into account for the strategic planning and evaluation of infrastructure supply, and coordinate or subsidize public transport projects with significant positive externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon existing fiscal federal arrangements, this article considers the options facing the European Union to reform its own framework. There are two plausible ways the EU can stabilize the finances of its member states over the longer term. The first is to take steps that complement the market discipline of individual member states. For market discipline to play this positive role, three conditions need to be met: (1) markets need to have accurate information on member state finances; (2) the market valuation of a given state also has to be an accurate valuation of the sustainability of that state’s finances; and (3) populations need to interpret market discipline as a signal about their government’s competence and punish governments that face market pressure. Such a system is possible under the current Stability and Growth Pact, and indeed it appears that all three conditions held in summer 2009. Any bailout of a member state, however, undermines this type of system. More political integration would be needed to prevent a state from getting into a situation where a bailout would be an option. The Brazilian model is a precedent that the European Union could emulate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Current conventional wisdom suggests that military expenditure may affect economic growth through the creation of additional aggregate demand, the whole host of spin-offs that result from military spending, the possible reduction of investment, and the displacement of talent from the most dynamic secrets of civilian production. Earlier empirical studies on the subject have reported conflicting research findings, attributed to the use of cross-sectional analysis, sample variations and differences in specificational choices, time periods examined, and databases used. These considerations point to the need fat case-specific studies using time-series data for individual countries. This article investigates the growth-defense relationship in the case of Greece over the period from 1960 to 1993. Results show that the annual output growth rate in Greece is negatively affected by the size of the defense sector, as measured by real military expenditure. They indicate that the post-1974 threat of war facing Greece as well as the oil-price shocks of the 1970s have retarded economic growth in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]