Panayotis G. Michaelides

Emil Lederer and the Schumpeter–Hilferding–Tugan-Baranowsky Nexus

This paper focuses on the thinking of Emil Lederer, one of the leading academic socialists of Germany in the 1920s. Lederers views on economic development, technical change, credit and business cycles are compared to those of Schumpeter. The paper traces the roots of some of their ideas back to the work of two prominent Marxists, Rudolf Hilferding and Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranowsky. The paper concludes that although Lederer and Schumpeter are traditionally classified in different schools of thought, their theoretical views on many issues converge.

The role of Jews in the late Ottoman and early Greek Salonica

Salonica is the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’ and the ‘mother-city of Israel’. However, the contribution of the Jewish community to the local cultural and economic development of late Ottoman and early Greek times Salonica has been inadequately acknowledged with the exception of very few important contributions. Given the significant presence of the Jewish community in the city, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to it as a contributing factor to the development of the broader urban area and population of the—now—northern Greek port city. The city of Salonica spatially embodied the more attractive features of the Ottoman Empire; it also stands for nationalism and genocide, which successively in the 20th century brought about the demographic and physical transformation of the city’s built environment, the brutal ‘population exchange’ with the newly created Turkish Republic in 1923 and the deportation of its Jewish population by the Nazis in 1943.

Emil Lederer’s Theory of Economic Fluctuations and the Role of Financial Institutions

Emil Lederer was characterized as the “leading academic socialist of Germany in the 1920’s” by Joseph Schumpeter and was a highly respected economist of his time. However, most aspects of his work remain totally unexplored. This paper focuses on Emil Lederer’s theory of economic fluctuations defending the thesis that certain aspects of Lederer’s conceptualization of economic fluctuations underwent considerable modifications when his 1925 article Konjunktur und Krisen is compared with his 1938 book Technical Progress and Unemployment., a shift unacknowledged so far in the literature. In his first attempt to tackle the issue, in Konjunktur und Krisen (1925), Lederer had constructed an explanation consistent with the so-called “disproportionality theory” introduced by Tugan-Baranowsky (codified as “early Lederer”). However, Lederer’s conception of the business cycle during the 1930s and especially in his major work Technical Progress and Unemployment underwent considerable modifications. Lederer’s (1938) analysis is, apparently, very ‘Schumpeterian’ (codified as “late Lederer”). In this version of his theory, the cycle is explained by supply-side factors, and more specifically by technical change. Additionally, Lederer’s view on the role of financial institutions (credit and banks) with regards to business cycles is analysed. Lederer avoided attributing a causative role to monetary factors. The interrelation between ‘real’ factors and financial institutions constitutes an essential element in his analysis of the business cycle.

European Airlines’ TFP and the 2001 Attack: Towards Safety in a Risk Society

The purpose of this paper is to analyze in terms of security the complexity of European Air Transport after the 2001 terrorist attack, taking into account Total Factor Productivity (T.F.P.) change. Our approach regards European Air Transport as a complex system of airplanes, airports and control. The investigation is based on recent data from the Amadeus database for the largest European (EU-27) air transportation companies (1997-2005). The paper employs the Cobb-Douglas specification of the production function and, in this context, tests the hypothesis that the 2001 terrorist attack had a significant influence on the performance of the EU-27 air transportation companies. An interesting finding is that except for some companies that were negatively influenced, several others were positively influenced by the 2001 terrorist attack. The technological level of the companies included in our dataset remained almost unchanged. The empirical findings are discussed and some suggestions are made regarding policy issues.

Technology clustering: The case of Greece

In the globalization era, economic research has consistently shown that innovation effects tend to be clustered. Greece is among the oldest members of the E.U., one of the laggards in productivity and competitiveness in the wider E.U. and ranks very low in attracting foreign investments. In this paper, the various sectors of economic activity in Greece have been assembled into clusters presenting similar technology and growth characteristics which have a significant influence upon the productivity and competitiveness of the economy, by applying the Cluster Analysis methodology. In this way, the twenty-one sectors of economic activity are divided into three main sectors (i.e. primary, secondary, and tertiary) which are, in general terms, consistent with the structure of the total economy. Finally, some comments are made concerning policy issues for Greece.

Design and Implementation of a Database for the Estimation of Environmental Indicators in an Input - Output Framework with the Use of NAMEA Tables

The aim of the present paper is to design and implement a database for the estimation of environmental indicators by sector of economic activity at the macroeconomic level by means of input–output analysis with the use of NAMEA environmental tables. The database is programmed in VBA with the use of SQL queries and is implemented in a Microsoft Access environment through a friendly interface for inserting the data requested by the model (number of sectors, number of pollutants, etc). The computational results of the dataset of the relevant pollution coefficients (direct, indirect and total) by sector of economic activity are inserted in the database for further elaboration. Through the creation of the database we can pinpoint the sectors and the pollutants that cause the largest environmental load and compare the results with the corresponding databases of other countries.