ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Continuity and change: mapping the community of economists in Greece (1944-1967)
Author: Kakridis Andreas
This paper approaches economists from two complementary angles: (a) as members of the Greek Society for Economic Sciences and (b) as contributors to the country’s learned journals. Statistical data compiled from these sources is placed in the appropriate historical and institutional framework, and combined with biographical information on the age, educational background and professional career of each individual. Greek economics was a state-centred profession whose fate was intertwined with that of the post-war developmental state. Most economists were employed at universities, the civil service or banking, with substantial interpenetration between branches. This configuration of professional constituencies, in conjunction with the structural features of each institution, conditioned the form and content of economic discourse. Professional and ideological cohesion went hand in hand, whilst substantial degrees of vertical and horizontal control by senior members further fostered consensus and increased professional sclerosis. This was especially true in academia, where chairs belonged to economists educated in inter-war Germany or France. The economics discourse was state-oriented with a bias toward policy and credit-related issues, and an aversion toward taboo issues sensitive to each professional constituency. Nevertheless, data on journal publications suggests that a substantial realignment took place in the late 1950s and 1960s, as a younger generation of scholars – most of them educated in the post-war UK or US – entered the scene. These were not only proficient in recent methodological innovations; more importantly, they were less constrained by the ideological and institutional impediments that had burdened previous generations of scholars.
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