Unemployment in Greece: Econometric Evidence after the Athens 2004 Olympics and before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009

Stavros Rodokanakis

doi:10.5402/2012/619602

Abstract

This paper investigates the probability of employment in Greece and focuses on 2006, namely, well after the Athens 2004 Olympics and its fiscal stimulus and before the eruption of the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 that transformed into an economic and sovereign debt crisis with unprecedented consequences in the country's postwar economic history. Based on microdata from the Labour Force Survey, the analysis depicts the impact of gender, age, marital status, area of residence, level of education, and immigrant status on finding a job, in Greece as a whole and the two most populated Greek regions, Attica and Central Macedonia. The findings of the logit model show differences in the three areas under examination mainly among the educational variables and area of residence.

Highlights

The aim of the paper is to study the impact that various social and demographic characteristics had on the labour market in the Greek regions of Attica and Central Macedonia, and the entire country, in 2006—the year before the global financial crisis of 2007–2009
Women were more likely to be unemployed than men, the married were less likely to be unemployed than the nonmarried, whereas people in the age group 15–24 years old were found in a worse situation in the labour market in relation to the remaining age categories
In the domain of education for the Region of Central Macedonia (RCM) in 2006 only primary school graduates and M.S. or Ph.D. holders are statistically significant

Summary

Introduction

The aim of the paper is to study the impact that various social and demographic characteristics had on the labour market in the Greek regions of Attica and Central Macedonia, and the entire country, in 2006—the year before the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. The access to the individual anonymised records of the Greek LFS was not allowed to researchers until the summer of 2005, due to the Data Protection Act. The paper starts discussing unemployment in Europe and Greece, and the macroeconomic indicators of Greece focusing on the recent fiscal and investment bottlenecks, and the problem of shadow economy in the country; we refer to the macroeconomic data of the examined areas. The paper concludes with the impact of the socioeconomic variables used on employment probability in the examined areas and ends with some general comments on the merit and value of this study, and the prospects for further research

Unemployment in Europe and the Examined Areas

Greece in the European and World Economy

Econometric Model

Macedonia

Findings

Conclusions