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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the Greek firms' earnings management policies compared with debt, taxation and the financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors show that existed measures of real earnings management, whether corrected for performance or not, rely crucially on strong assumptions. The authors provide a novel modelling that permits panel structure so as to correct for heterogeneity across firms while permitting to determine endogenously the number of underlying firm-groups in the data generating process. Findings: The empirical results indicate that Greek firms are likely to reduce earnings manipulation activities when they face liquidity risk. Taxation and financial crisis have a negative and positive effect on earnings management, respectively. Originality/value: The effect of debt, taxation and financial crisis on earnings management has never been investigated in Greece. The empirical results offer valuable information to shareholders and investors as they can understand how some main factors, such as debt, taxation and financial crisis, influence firm's accounting practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light – whether natural or artificial – plays multiple roles in the home: both as a material enabler of everyday life and as a device for exercising a variety of social relations. The post-2008 Greek economic crisis has endangered those roles by limiting people’s ability to access or afford adequate energy services. This paper focuses on the enforced lack of illumination in the home, and the strategies and tactics undertaken by households to overcome this challenge. I connect illumination practices and discourses to the implementation of austerity, by arguing that the threat of darkness has become a tool for compelling vulnerable groups to pay their electricity bills. The evidence presented in the paper is based on two sets of interviews with 25 households (including a total of 55 adult members) living in and around Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest city, and one that has suffered severe economic consequences as a result of the crisis. I have established that the under-consumption of light is one of the most pronounced expressions of energy poverty, and as such endangers the ability to participate in the customs that define membership of society. But the emergence of activist-led amateur electricians and the symbolic and material mobilization of light for political purposes have also created multiple opportunities for resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the capabilities approach as a framework for examining the impact of the global economic crisis and austerity on quality of working life and work‐life balance. Our paper focuses on Greece, an extreme case of a country in economic crisis, characterized by a weak institutional basis. We build on the work of Barbara Hobson and colleagues who first applied the capabilities approach to explore work‐life balance capabilities. Our study contributes to the development of theory by emphasizing the sense of entitlement concept within the capabilities approach and by proposing a modified conceptual framework that encapsulates the link between capabilities, agency, and the sense of entitlement, where the latter acts as a cognitive 'filter' that enhances or weakens an individual's perception of her/his agency to enact on her/his capabilities. Drawing on the accounts of twenty Greek professional and managerial workers, we illustrate how the crisis and austerity measures have eroded working conditions and thus the sense of entitlement, leading to the weakening of our participants' agency and capabilities to achieve quality of working life and work‐life balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reasoning lines in PM Alexis Tsipras' political discourse in critical moments of SYRIZA's tenure as the ruling party in Greece. Adopting a CDS perspective, we zoom in on the patterns that underlie the (de)legitimization of the crisis-ridden EU in three seminal speeches by PM Tsipras during the Greek/EU financial crisis. To this end, we integrate systemic-functional and cognitive linguistic tools with a view to scrutinizing representational meaning, before turning to employ the notions of endoxon and topos/locus as a means of studying the particular argumentative inferences, triggered by the respective discursive representations. Through this lens, we show how the overall argumentation can be seen as supporting the (de-)legitimation of dominant EU austerity perspectives while transforming SYRIZA into a pro-austerity voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do firm‐specific shocks contribute to large economic downturns associated with financial crises? Using a large and representative dataset on Greek firms covering all sectors of the economy over the period 2000–2014, we find that the contribution of firm‐specific shocks to the volatility of aggregate sales growth increased substantially (about 30%) during the Greek financial crisis and dominated the contribution of macro‐economic and sectoral shocks. We also find that, throughout the sample period, inter‐firm linkages are two and a half times as important as the direct effect of firm shocks in driving aggregate fluctuations. However, during the financial crisis, the Greek economy became more granular, and the direct effect of firm‐specific shocks had increased importance in driving aggregate volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis signifies a turning point for Greek national self-image. The present paper explores the ideological function of interpretative repertoires in relation to the reproduction and contestation of national identity. We focus on two basic repertoires: a victimizing and a self-blaming one. Even though connotations of victimhood are not homogenous, its association with an external enemy is very popular. This paper demonstrates that discourses of victimization are not unambiguous and solidified; they interact with self-blaming discursive patterns, thus leading to hybrid perceptions of the national self-image that are adjusted to particular political actors’ strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the eruption of the Greek economic crisis in 2010 and the introduction of austerity policies, Greece’s public space has become a theatre of intense political conflict in the form of social unrest, mass mobilisations, symbolic and physical clashes and political instability. This paper suggests that these developments can be understood in a productive way by drawing on a psychoanalytic understanding of loss and trauma. This framework can help us understand the transformation of a popular subject previously loyal to the political establishment into a disenchanted one, and also address the question of emotional intensities at play in this detachment. But in addition, psychoanalysis highlights the possibility of different responses to loss and the different ethical implications that these can have, which stands in contrast to accounts that see radicalisation as inherently dangerous. Far-right and left-wing responses are examined and characterised through this lens. The paper concludes that there are nuances in the left-wing responses that can meet the ethical criteria set by a psychoanalytic understanding of loss. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives: The economic crisis and the resulting austerity in Greece led to a drastic reduction in healthcare spending, which has been assumed to have impacted people's health. This paper discusses official standardized mortality rates in Greece between 2000 and 2015. Methods: This study was designed to analyze population-level data and collected data from the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Eurostat, and the Hellenic Statistics Authority. Separate linear regression models were developed for the periods before and after the crisis and were compared. Results: Standardized mortality rates do not support a previously reported assumption of a specific and direct negative effect of austerity on global mortality. Standardized rates continued to decrease linearly, and their correlation to economic variables changed after 2009. Total infant mortality rates show an overall rising trend since 2009, but the interpretation is unclear because of the reduction in the absolute number of deliveries. Conclusions: The mortality data from the first six years of the financial crisis in Greece and the decade that preceded do not support the assumption that budget cuts in health are related to the dramatic worsening of the overall health of the Greek people. Still, data suggest an increase in specific causes of death and the burden on a dysfunctional and unprepared health system that is working in an overstretched manner trying to meet needs. The dramatic acceleration of the aging of the population constitutes a specific challenge for the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the recipe that requires defence expenditure reductions in an environment of severe budget cuts together with rising costs. The case of Greece, a country that is in the process of recovering from a six-year economic crisis, provides an example of an economy in which an import - substitution strategy via the promotion of the Hellenic Defence Industrial Base potential can contribute to both economic growth and unemployment reduction, thus adding to the effectiveness of the import-substitution policies employed and compromising between an austerity programme and the defence needs of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to develop Minskyan financial fragility indices for the government sector and to examine the financial structure of the Greek government before and after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2009. We provide empirical evidence that clearly shows the growing financial fragility of the Greek public sector in the 2000s. We also assess the effectiveness of the implemented bailout adjustment programmes in Greece and claim that the conducted austerity measures and fiscal consolidation have not significantly improved the financial posture of the Greek government sector. We argue that the implementation of fiscal and wage austerity in an economy that lacks structural competitiveness produces prolonged recession and unemployment with adverse feedback effects on the financial fragility of the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three years, Greece has been in the throes of economic and social crises. The crises have been triggered by the implementation of severe austerity policies and have been connected with negative effects on people's mental health and well-being. Consequently, psychological therapies have been instigated to respond to the arising systemic and political problems such as unemployment, deprivation and economic oppression. Traditional modes of intervention based on individualization, depoliticization and pa-thologization are hard pressed to help people confront such issues. Could mainstream approaches prevail? Using the mythical and tragic hero Prometheus, this review focuses on how psychotherapists and counsellors can help people who have been confronting insurmountable problems to reflect on the meaning of human suffering and develop active resistance against unjust authority in adverse conditions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the 2008 debt crisis, European governments responded initially with stimulus programs aiming at growing their way out of the problem, only to follow with austerity policies aiming at reducing government budget deficits and overall debt levels. At the same time, households and businesses have been quickly deleveraging in an attempt to better withstand the uncertainties ensuing from a prolonged debt crisis. The macroeconomic accounting identity however reveals that government sector surpluses, and private sector surpluses can exist simultaneously only if current account surpluses are also occurring at the same time. For countries with persistent current account surpluses, like Germany, pursuing such austerity policies may be quite fruitful. For countries experiencing chronic current account deficits, like the U.S and the U.K, such policies can work only if the countries can quickly reverse their negative international transactions balance of payments. This implies a path of rapid currency devaluations, attempting to make exports more competitive in the world markets. Yet in other countries, like Greece and Portugal, with chronic current account deficits and no currency of their own to devalue, these same policies may be detrimental and undesirable. This paper examines the possible policy alternatives Greece, and other countries in the same situation as Greece, are presented with and makes specific recommendations as to which policy would produce the best possible results. The analysis presented in this paper should be very useful to the governments of all newer EU members dreaming of joining the European monetary union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grassroots responses and alternatives to austerity that have emerged in Athens and Greece call for a re-thinking of the recent neoliberal crisis through articulations of contestation 'from below'. This paper addresses this yet nascent theoretical debate through the notion of 'urban solidarity spaces', focusing on the spatiality of counter-austerity politics that emerges in and out of places and expands across urban space and beyond. From survival tactics grounded in Athenian neighbourhoods, such as local solidarity initiatives; to solidarity structures and cooperatives; and broader strategies of transformation and alternatives, such as the formation of a solidarity economy. These aim to constitute an empowering process of solidarity-making 'from below', and open up spaces for the practice of bottom-up democratic politics vis-à-vis austerity, a 'politics of fear' and crisis. The arguments raised here methodologically draw on activist ethnographic research in the 'Athens of crisis', between 2012 and 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On July 5, 2015, Greek voters were asked whether to approve or reject the terms of an austerity program offered by the European Union (EU) to resolve an ongoing financial crisis. With a turnout rate of 62.5% overall, 61.3% of Greeks voted 'no.' While a majority of voters in every district opposed the bailout's terms, the margin against the proposed austerity measures ranged from 51.2% in Lakonias to 73.8% in Chanion. This paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the 'no' vote across Greece's 56 electoral districts. Our analysis is grounded in public choice theories of why large numbers of people turn out to vote in mass elections. In addition to controlling for standard 'instrumental' vote motives, we ask whether political party labels, which serve as summary measures of partisan positioning, and party platforms, which express partisan preferences on ballot questions, are salient in determining electoral outcomes. Holding constant the unemployment rate and average voter age (at the regional level) and the fraction of young people casting ballots for the first time on July 5, 2015 (at the district level), we find that the percentage of 'no' votes was reduced significantly by voter support for Greece's leading pro-austerity party (New Democracy) in the previous nationwide election held in January 2015. In contrast, voter support in January for the anti-austerity party (Syriza), led by sitting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, had no measurable impact on July's referendum results. This finding offers support for both instrumental and expressive theories of voting and bolsters the claim that political parties can shape electoral outcomes on questions decided by an institution of direct democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is poorly performing economies like Greece that have become synonymous with sovereign debt crises in recent times, other more deeply indebted economies remain exempt from such representations. This paper builds on an argument made elsewhere that sovereign debt crises are implicated in the expansion of colonial power through austerity, in both their overt and covert manifestations. While the 2015 Greek referendum in a climate of austerity attempted to cover over the imperializing will of the European Union through the referendum device, in Australia the referendum campaign seeking ‘recognition’ of Aboriginal people in the Constitution effaces the foundational debts of dispossession that structure both economy and sovereignty. While the referendums in both crises are invoked to resolve different legal, economic and cultural issues, they are indissociably connected in that they operate to legitimize the expansion of global colonial power. Referendums more generally are becoming increasingly visible as governance devices and yet their cultural-legal and racial meanings are yet to be tracked. I begin this task by bringing together a range of heterogeneous texts and literatures. By analysing and interconnecting these seemingly disparate texts, I argue that the Greek and Australian referendums are both techniques of colonial power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The proliferation of debt crises around the world since the 1980' s has generated debt-repayment negotiations prioritizing austerity in debtor countries. This forty-year history of debt crises in the Global South and North now allows comparison of these negotiations and their impacts. We examine the distinct and historically specific trajectories in Latin American and Greece, highlighting the foundations of each experience of debt crisis. We focus on the institutions responsible for managing crisis and their reliance on similar austerity strategies to compel debtor countries into a neoliberal restructuring of their economies. This paper examines the similarities and differences in austerity policy through a comparative-historical analysis of Latin American and Greek experiences of debt crisis. The results of such policies and the political actors involved in implementing austerity are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Greek crisis deepens and ‘recovery’ is constantly postponed to an unknown future, a dominant discourse seems to consolidate which focuses almost exclusively on macro-economic arguments and concerns. Other aspects of the crisis, among which are its gendered facets and unequal effects on women and men, rarely permeate the allegedly ‘central’ understandings. With the possible exception of unemployment which fares high among left-wing analysts, gender is thought to pertain to a ‘special’, that is, less important, matter which may detract from the ‘main problem’. The paper draws together a series of stories of ordinary women who have experienced deep changes in their everyday lives as a result of austerity policies (unemployment, precarity, salary and pension cuts, shrinking social rights, mounting everyday violence). It argues that emphasis on this scale ‘closest in’, linked in multiple ways to many other scales (local, national, European, international), reveals areas of knowledge that would otherwise remain in the dark; and that connecting concrete bodies with global processes enriches our understandings with more complex and more flexible variables and informs the ‘big pictures’ (in this case about the Greek crisis)—and not only the reverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to develop a post-Keynesian interpretation and viewpoint of the required policies associated with the Greek financial crisis. The Troika, inspired by the book After the Washington Consensus, and with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acting in a leading role, embraced austerity in their disbursement of funds. The imposed conditionalities induced a deep recession, created an unfathomable challenge for Greece to meet the conditionalities year after year, and resulted in a sequence of failed adjustment programs, one after the other. Scholars, students, and policymakers of the global financial crisis and international development will benefit from these findings because the subject is of current interest and uses Greece as a case study to speak to the ongoing debates about the imposed recession as an antidote to the global financial crisis. JEL Classification : B5, E60, E65 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper intends to describe the new social and economic conditions that emerge from the recent economic crisis and the austerity policy in Greece and affect the social integration of young people in Greek society. Social inequality has sharpened, one third of the population lives below the poverty line, and the number of homeless has increased considerably. The deteriorating situation in the Greek labor market is presented and the position of young people which is seriously affected by unemployment, low wages, job uncertainty, deterioration of labor conditions is documented. Due to these circumstances many young people marry late (after 30 years of age) and about one third is forced to stay ii their parents household. Although working conditions had already been difficult before the crisis, they sharpened considerably after 2009 so that one of two young people up to 24 years of age and one of four between 24-34 years of age are unemployed. Young women and persons with a university degree face special difficulties to find a job. The prospects for a future amelioration of this situation are very dark. Under these conditions the question for the young generation in Greece whether to stay in the country or go abroad and find a job, is becoming crucial. Taking these into consideration the future prospects are rather disappointing. A whole generation cannot live and ameliorate its living conditions in comparison to the previous generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the impact of the two recent economic crises, one that resulted from the great recession of 2007–2009 and one following the COVID-19 pandemic, on income inequality and the risk of poverty in Greece. To this end, we also investigate the key macroeconomic variables affecting the Greek income distribution. We find that alternative measures of inequality and relative poverty have deteriorated during the years of crises, implying that the country's response to economic shocks has been particularly harmful for its more disadvantaged citizens. Regarding the variables affecting the income distribution, we show that income inequality and the risk of poverty increase with growth, implying that the benefits of growth, and burdens of recession, are distributed unequally among members of the Greek society. Moreover, inequality appears to increase with unemployment and decrease with the share of wages and salaries in total income. This finding highlights the importance of labour market regulations and workers' welfare for attaining equality. Finally, we provide evidence that, during pre-election periods, income inequality is reduced, meaning that the political budget cycles, which are characteristic of the Greek economy, generate gains in terms of equality, but these gains are short-lived and mainly benefit the middle bracket of the income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to document the health effects of the Greek financial crisis. The hardship of the crisis as well as the austerity measures put in place to combat it are found to have negatively impacted public health, personal health, and mental health within the country. Despite these sobering findings, NGOs have made promising and innovative advances in countering the negative health effects, and the government is actively working towards the creation of policies that will bring this crisis within a crisis to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most prominent ‘victim’ of the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 has been Greece, which is, even now, in the middle of an economic and social storm that is threatening its economic and social cohesion and its membership of the Eurozone. Using the social well-being conceptual framework as a benchmark and exploiting the literature of composite indicators, the paper aims to assess and measure the regional impact of the crisis in a systematic and comprehensive way. Differing from most of previous studies, both at national and international levels, this study is based on the assumption that the effects of the crisis go far beyond economics and create a social crisis strongly associated with significant human and social costs that might transform Greece’s regional status and threaten its regional well-being, probably in a very unequal way. The main finding of the analysis is that although all regions were severely affected by the dynamics and intensity of the crisis, some regions were more affected than others, leading to ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. From a policy point of view, the results of this study have serious implications for crisis management, recovery policy actions and a country’s social cohesion, especially in Greece where austerity policy measures not only imposed considerable cutbacks in regional development policies but also ignored the spatial dimension of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debt crisis in Greece since 2010 has triggered seismic changes in the political attitudes of the society and, above all, the political identity and discourse of the country. The extremely unpopular austerity policies caused a severe internal polarization which quickly translated into anti-German mass hysteria, vitriolic anti-EU rhetoric and sharp anti-austerity populism. This paper will endeavour to identify the origins, course and outcome of this dramatic shift in the political attitudes and identity in Greece and analyse them with the benefit of hindsight – almost six years after the eruption of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European sovereign debt crisis resulted in policies of fiscal austerity and economic downturn in Greece, marked by a prolonged period of recession and high unemployment. This article explores the social impact of the economic crisis, focusing on its effects on altruism using new household-level survey data and quasi-behavioral outcomes. We focus on the effects of joblessness, the most severe form of economic hardship imposed as a result of the crisis. Our findings reveal a strong relationship between job loss in the household and decreased altruism. We provide experimental evidence of these effects and of in-group bias in charitable giving as a result of joblessness. Our results show that joblessness intensifies survey respondents' preferences for national as opposed to foreign charities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the merger decisions from a sample of Greek listed companies in the economic crisis period and shortly after its end, by employing various quantitative and qualitative variables of mergers that signalize different levels of risk. The results revealed that the performance subsequent of mergers is not significantly different for the merged companies. But in comparison to control sample of companies without mergers for the examined period, the results reveal that merger transactions signalize a more stable profitability and better performance for the companies with mergers. Furthermore, merger events signalize different performance levels during and after the crisis: mergers that took place when there was no economic crisis are far more profitable and lead to better performance from mergers during the period of economic crisis. Last, regarding the industry relatedness of the merged firms, the industry type and the merger combination of merged companies, there is not any impact from them on the post-merger performance in the examined accounting measures. The study proposes for companies that during crisis periods maybe merger be the only way to survive and provide a stable profitability and accounting performance for shareholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of the neoliberal construction of European monetary integration, the Greek economic crisis and the Hayekian-style austerity policies being used to deal with it are analyzed. After theoretically characterizing these policies, the paper analyzes how their generalization in Europe is helping to deepen the European crisis and jeopardizing the recovery of the world economy. Nevertheless, the reason of the crisis is the loss of monetary sovereignty of every country and the financing of the state is sustained across the financial bank and not bank investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Sport & Health Research is the property of Journal of Sport & Health Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers a depiction of Athens focused on the consequences that the initial round of Memoranda measures (2012–2015) produced on its urban space. On a theoretical level, a strategic function of the Greek capital is posited, seeing it as an urban laboratory for testing debt policies; accordingly, the primary focus is on the neoliberal agenda set in motion there, mainly consisting of the combination of privatization programmes and the securitization of urban space. Consequently, some of the emerging critical issues – i.e. Rethink Athens and the cases of the Akadimia Platonos, Ellinikò and Aghios Panteleimonas neighbourhoods, alongside the most relevant bio-political tactics of social control - are encapsulated within a specific model of governance, named auste-city and specifically targeted at normalizing the 'extraordinary' state of economic crisis into an ultimate rule. The conclusion is that austerity is currently disclosing an opportunity for neoliberal forces to reorganize their own dominion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy intended to resolve the Greek financial crisis is not a resolution strategy at all—it is more accurately conceptualized as a crisis management strategy, which is insufficient to reduce the public debt and instead fuels a deflationary spiral. Consequently, power is wielded by unelected, international political and financial institutions and actors, the crisis management regime, who have engendered a wave of discipline, surveillance, and control alongside a neoliberal restructuring of the Greek economy.JEL Classification: G01, E62, P16 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The victory of the radical-left SYRIZA in the September 2015 election confounded expectations given the failure of the SYRIZA–ANEL government formed in January either to deliver on its central promise of reversing austerity policies or to capitalise on its major victory in the July referendum. The article examines both the election and the referendum that preceded it, offering an explanation for SYRIZA’s victory. It also attempts to trace the trajectory of the current party system in Greece and its ongoing realignment process in light of the 2015 electoral contests and the busy political timeline since the formation of the first SYRIZA–ANEL government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructed theoretically by the critical discussion on the media’s alignment with the institutions of power in societies, this study examines how the Greek legacy press framed the discussion over the crisis, by focusing on the bailout agreements Greece signed with the troika during the period 2010–2012. The analysis, following a three-step process in frames’ detection, focuses on the associations of actors and their responsibility, causes, solutions and effects of the crisis and the bailouts, as appearing in the news texts studied, and reveals a de-contexualised neoliberal discourse articulated through three distinct frames: the dependency, the (non)liability and the austerity frame. The representations of the financial crisis in the newspapers studied largely echo the neoliberal voices and strengthen the hegemonic discourse over the necessity and inescapability of the bailout policies, feeding the ‘masterframe’ of the neoliberal vision of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The programme for fiscal consolidation in Greece has led to income decrease and several changes in health policy. In this context, this study aims to assess how economic crisis affected unmet healthcare needs in Greece.Methods: Time series analysis was performed for the years 2004 through 2011 using the EU-SILC database. The dependent variable was the percentage of people who had medical needs but did not use healthcare services. Median income, unemployment and time period were used as independent variables. We also compared self-reported unmet healthcare needs drawn from a national survey conducted in pre-crisis 2006 with a similar survey from 2011 (after the onset of the crisis). A common questionnaire was used in both years to assess unmet healthcare needs, including year of survey, gender, age, health status, chronic disease, educational level, income, employment, health insurance status, and prefecture. The outcome of interest was unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons. Ordinary least squares, as well as logistic regression analysis were conducted to analyze the results.Results: Unmet healthcare needs increased after the enactment of austerity measures, while the year of participation in the survey was significantly associated with unmet healthcare needs. Income, educational level, employment status, and having insurance, private or public, were also significant determinants of unmet healthcare needs due to financial reasons.Conclusions: The adverse economic environment has significantly affected unmet health needs. Therefore health policy actions and social policy measures are essential in order to mitigate the negative impact on access to healthcare services and health status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Comparative Economic Research is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the economies of European Union countries, with focus on the financial crisis in Greece. Topics include the lack of industry in Greece; the growth of engineering and manufacturing sectors in Germany; the ability of countries that invent and manufacture to survive the recession; various solutions for Greece to emerge from crisis such as a plan of rebranded austerity or a debt forgiveness package; and the meltdown of Switzerland's currency franc.

The capitulation of Syriza could have been anticipated. They had given assurances to the ruling class in the years before assuming power in Greece. Capitulation was inscribed in the main strategic line officially declared and followed consistently by Syriza: ‘Neither break nor surrender [to the EU, ECB and the IMF] but an honest compromise'. They expected to implement a mild Keynesian policy, a policy that is an illusion in the contemporary crisis of capitalism.They asked for a class peace in conditions of open class war.Austerity is a means of control under conditions when the neoliberal strategy has failed and the globalization promoted by finance capital has imploded. The sinister story of the three Memoranda imposed in Greece in the last five years abolish, in form and in essence, all economic and legislative sovereignty from the Greek State. It takes into its extremes a long history of debts, defaults, foreign political interference and economic dependence of the country. The resistance of the population is a political time-bomb that Capital's institutions cannot defuse. In the current world crisis of global capitalismit is not only the Greek link that has been broken in 2009–2010 but the European chain itself, without meaning by this its automatic collapse.Nothing can be the same in the euro-zone, in the EU, and globally after the Greek bankruptcy. Greece as ‘Europe's failed state in waiting' (Larry Summersdixit) is situated in the crossroads of all international contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis in Greece and its consequent association with a German dominance in Europe have brought to the fore long-forgotten memories of World War II in the country, both in political discourse and the collective consciousness from 2009 onwards. Emotionally charged references to a war atmosphere after the imposition of the early austerity measures at the outburst of the crisis have turned into compensation demands towards Germany six years later. Drawing from diverse both media and scholarly sources, this research aims to look into specific cases in which the vocabulary of the current adversity draws parallels with German occupation experiences. Furthermore, it investigates both the background of the individuals and social groups by which these associations are expressed and the extent to which revival of the past raises awareness, triggers action, or causes apathy. Overall, the article addresses the broader issue of the unprocessed grief of two wars being recycled under circumstances of collective distress in contemporary Greek society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Ironic slogans voice opposition to neoliberal austerity measures as people in western Thessaly, Greece, strive to account for dramatically increasing poverty and cultivate a sense of collective suffering in an era of economic crisis. The slogans are pinned to moments of socioeconomic turmoil in recent Greek history, such as the 1941-43 famine and the 1973 polytechnic uprising against military dictatorship. Through satire, they capture local and national attitudes toward the government's current austerity policy and neoliberalism more generally. Drawing on powerful tropes of food, the slogans critique the experiences of neoliberal reform, becoming sites of resistance and solidarity that reframe relations between local people, their government, and international creditors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrial Relations / Relations Industrielles is the property of Universite Laval, Department of Industrial Relations and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article I examine the friction between xenophobic discourses on migration and the crisis caused by the politics of austerity in Greece. On the one hand, an 'excessive' influx of migration is managed through violent means by the state and the para-state; on the other, a 'scarcity' of domestic resources is blamed for a 'rise' in racist attitudes, and the political ascent of a fascist movement-cum-parliamentary party, Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn). 'Crisis' is said to give rise to 'austerity'-and hostility. Inverting the inverted causal relationship between crisis, austerity and hostility, I problematise representations of hostility towards migrants that construct racism as a consequence of economic conditions or even as the antidote to the 'bitter pill' Greeks have been forced to swallow. I examine how racialised and gendered violence secures the politics of austerity in Greece focusing on three eruptions of violence (the feminicidal acid attack on Konstantina Kouneva, the murder of Shehzad Luqman and the drowning of eleven refugees near the island of Farmakonisi). I draw concrete connections between the politics of austerity and what, drawing on Sara Ahmed, might be termed an 'affective economy of hostility' that articulates racialised and gendered modes of belonging and estrangement. Some bodies are rendered vulnerable and precarious, while others assert an entitled relation to national space while being economically disentitled by austerity measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on surveys of voters and MPs in Greece, this article analyses elite–mass interaction on key policy (austerity, European integration, immigration) and ideological issues after the 2012 elections. We find that while for the government parties, New Democracy and PASOK, the level of congruence is quite high, MPs from opposition parties (SYRIZA, Golden Dawn) place themselves in more exposed positions in comparison with their voters. The observed substantial variation in the intensity and direction of congruence, across parties and issue preferences in Greece, reinforces the view that the dimensionality of political contestation is not reducible to a single ideological dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article attempts to assess the crisis of hegemony and profound changes to Greece's political scene and answers prevailing myths about the Greek crisis. Topics discussed include the important aspects of the Greek Debt crisis such as the Greece's having one of the most lax tax regimes in Europe, the recession of Greek economy and consequent debt burden as a reflection of Greek capitalism based on low labor cost and exploitation of immigrant labor and the process of Greek Debt restructuring.

This article investigates the discursive framework of the Greek debt crisis in an attempt to rethink the characterization of the European Union as a post-modern, post-national polity. By scrutinizing speculative speeches delivered by the EU’s prominent politicians, this study argues that Greece is hybridized and constructed as a peripheral member of the EU in-group, part of the in-group, yet further away from the core. Politics of representation surrounding the current crisis show us that the EU is hardly constructed in a post-national/post-modern way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article constitutes a preliminary attempt to address the effects of the current economic crisis on the Greek environment. The austerity policies and other conditions imposed by the Memoranda of Understanding with the troika of international lenders are undermining the progress made in the pre-crisis years in the framework of European Union (EU) environmental policy. The latter conflicts with the EU's new priorities in the context of the Greek bailout programme. Examples include the air pollution caused by fuel substitution following a vast increase in heating fuel tax, the escalating environmental conflict related to gold-mining investment, and the crumbling environmental management apparatus. Strictly monitored by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, Greece needs to carefully delineate the trade-offs inherent in the country's ‘new’ model of growth. Proper policies are needed to avoid natural resource depletion, environmental decay and further national wealth reduction in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The austerity measures introduced as a response to the recent financial crisis in Greece have inspired a wave of discontent among local Greek actors. The latter declared themselves as "indignant" or "infuriated" with the austerity measures. Their indignation, as I demonstrate in this article, has been expressed in terms of diverse arguments that have either encouraged public protest or served as a critique of the protest in culturally intimate contexts. Here, I argue that the critical local discourse about the austerity measures does not merely represent an attempt to evade responsibility but a serious concern with accountability and the unsettling of moral community, which leads local actors to pursue their own interpretative trajectories. The resulting interpretations, in all their diversity, and despite the fact that they do not directly affect political decisions, provide local actors with a sense of discursive empowerment against their perceived peripheralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]