Euclid Tsakalotos (Greek: Ευκλείδης Τσακαλώτος, officially Ευκλείδης Στεφάνου Τσακαλώτος,[1] transcr. Efklidis Stefanou Tsakalotos, Greek pronunciation: [efˈkliðis steˈfanu t͜sakaˈlotos]; born 1960) is a Greek economist and politician. He has been a SYRIZA Member of the Hellenic Parliament since May 2012, and has been the Minister of Finance in the Greek government since 6 July 2015. From 27 January to 6 July 2015, Tsakalotos served as the Alternate Minister for International Economic Affairs in the Cabinet of Alexis Tsipras.[2]

Early life and education

Tsakalotos was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, the son of Stefanos Tsakalotos, a civil engineer who was working in the shipping industry.[3] The family relocated to the United Kingdom when the younger Tsakolotos was five years old.[4]

He attended St Paul's School, London[5] for at least the majority of his secondary education (from 1973–78). He has remarked that his favourite teacher there was Keith Perry, telling the school's alumni magazine, Old Pauline News that: “Without the help and guidance of Keith Perry, who did much to bolster my self-confidence, I doubt I would have gone on to become an academic" and that the most important value imparted by Perry was "the acceptance of well-meaning criticism".[6] Some sources say that he attended Eton College.[4][7]

He went on to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at The Queen's College, Oxford. He later completed a master's degree (MPhil) at the Institute of Development Studies located at the University of Sussex, and returned to Oxford in 1989 to do a doctorate under the supervision of Włodzimierz Brus.[8][9]:ix

Tsakalotos's education has been compared to that of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who also attended St Paul's School and the University of Oxford, although they are a decade apart.[10]
Academic career

From 1989 to 1990, he worked as a lecturer in economics at the University of Kent.[9] He taught at the University of Kent (October 1990 – June 1993) and Athens University of Economics and Business (October 1994 – September 2010).[8] Since 2010, he has been professor of economics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.[11]

He has written a number of books and articles on Greek and international economic policies, alone and in cooperation with other academics and writers. He has co-authored a number of works with his wife, who has also served as editor for some of the works that he has written alone. A detailed list and further treatment of select works can be found in Works, below.

He served as a member of the executive committee of POSDEP (Hellenic Federation of University Teachers' Associations).[8]
Political career

When at the University of Oxford, Tsakalotos joined the student wing of the Communist Party of Greece. In the early 1990s, he joined Synaspismos, which eventually became the largest constituent party of Syriza.[3] He is currently a member of the Central Committee of Syriza[12] and has been described as the "brains behind Syriza's economic policy".[5]

In the May 2012 legislative election he was elected a Member of the Hellenic Parliament for Syriza representing Athens B; he was re-elected on 17 June 2012 and on 25 January 2015. Whilst in opposition for two years, Tsakalotos had responsibility for economic affairs in the Syriza shadow cabinet.[13]
Alternate Minister for International Economic Affairs

One day after the 2015 legislative election on 26 January 2015, Tsakalotos was appointed to the position of 'Alternate Minister for International Economic Affairs' in the Cabinet of Alexis Tsipras. This position made him subordinate to Nikos Kotzias, the Minister for Foreign Affairs.[14]

On 7 March 2015, Tsakalotos spoke at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, saying that both Sinn Féin and Syriza are "part of a great realignment in European politics". He also met with Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Féin.[15]

In late April, Tsakalotos was made the coordinator of the Greek group negotiating with lenders representatives over a bailout plan.[16]
Minister of Finance

On 6 July 2015, the day after the Greek bailout referendum, the Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, resigned. Tsakalotos was chosen to succeed him.[5] Following this, Tsakalotos stepped down from the role of Alternate Minister for International Economic Relations.[17] At his first EU meeting as Minister of Finance, Tsakalotos brought a note with him that reminded him to display "no triumphalism" after the No vote in the Greek bailout referendum.[18]

On 16 July 2015, Tsakalotos spoke before the Greek Parliament to encourage them to vote yes to accept the terms of a major bailout package. He said in his speech: "I made a decision that will burden me for the rest of my life. I don't know if we did the right thing, however I do know that we felt like we had no other choice but do what we did."[19]
Personal life

Tsakalotos is married to Heather D. Gibson, a Scottish economist currently serving as Director-Advisor to the Bank of Greece and his oft-times research and writing partner. The couple have three children. His father, Greek civil engineer[3] Stefanos Tsakalotos, was working in Rotterdam in the shipping industry at the time of his birth, but moved the family to the United Kingdom when Euclid was five years old.[4]

Through his father, Euclid Tsakalotos is the first cousin twice-removed (great-grandnephew) of Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, who served as Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff.[3][20] Tsakalotos has been quoted as saying that his great-granduncle fought on the "...other side, the wrong side..." in the Greek Civil War, and worried that his great-grandnephew would become a "...liberal, certainly not anything further to the left."[3]

Together with his wife, Tsakalotos maintains two homes in Kifisia, along with an office in Athens and a vacation home in Preveza, courtesy of a large estate belonging to Tsakalotos's father. In 2013, this proved detrimental to him and his party when his critics began calling him «αριστερός αριστοκράτης» (aristeros aristokratis, "aristocrat of the left"), while newspapers opposed to Syriza seized on his property holdings as a chance to accuse the couple of hypocrisy for enjoying a generous lifestyle in private while criticizing the "ethic of austerity" in public. One opposition newspaper published on the front page criticism reasoning that Tsakalotos's own family wealth came from the same sort of investments in companies as made by financial institutions JP Morgan and BlackRock.[4]

Others in Tsakalotos's own circle are appreciative of his perceived aristocratic mien, with one Syriza member commenting that it helps in negotiations with Greece's European creditors, as he "speaks their language better than they do. At times it's been quite amusing to watch."[3]
Works
Books

Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the Eurozone and the World Economic Crisis (with Christos Laskos, Pluto Press, London, Chicago: 2013), ISBN 074533380X
Corporatism and Economic Performance: A Comparative Analysis of Market Economies (with Andrew Henley, Edward Elgar Publishing: 1993) ISBN 185278539X
Alternative Economic Strategies: The Case of Greece (Avebury Publishers, Aldershot: 1991), ISBN 1856281833

Alternative Economic Strategies: The Case of Greece

In 1991, Tsakalotos published Alternative Economic Strategies: The Case of Greece, in which he defends Andreas Papandreou and his attempts to craft a progressive economic policy in the face of the new orthodoxy of supply-side economics then gaining currency in many countries.[9] The work discusses supply-side economics,[9]:26 neo-corporatism[9]:103 and indicative planning[9]:36–51 in relation to the Greek experience. He discusses the idea of incomes policy[9]:103–105 and what he perceives as the Left's growing hostility to incomes policy in the latter half of the 20th century. He regards as misguided since, in his view, all economic policy inevitably affects income distribution.[9]:102 He discusses challenges in acheiving equilibrium between aggregate supply and aggregate demand,[9]:13:104–106 and how enterprise of any type has a natural tendency to preserve its share of consumption of value added in the face of oscillations in equilibrium price while leaving labour to adjust to the reduced share remaining when the equilibrium price falls, leading to real wage declines.[9]:106 He discusses potential solutions proposed by others including solidarity wage policy and social investment.[9]:111–112 While he notes that perfectly competitive markets are elusive in any setting, in his view the political culture of Greece at the time placed a higher premium on political power relative to private property and other instruments of competition as an end to achieving economic goals; therefore, the application in Greece of principles that had worked or seemed to be working in other countries would be less efficient and effective in Greece than they were elsewhere, which should be borne in mind when composing policy prescriptions for the country.[9]:270 For Tsakalotos, reforms to the political system and societal attitudes are a necessary precondition to economic reforms,[9]:289 and for him, "reform from below" is more promising than reform by entrenched state power-holders, as they will lack the will or the ability to adequately change power structures to the degree needed.[9]:289 Addtionally, a strong vision of whatever those economic reforms should be is necessary to carry them out, and he characterizes PASOK's attempts at reforms as to some extent failed because it failed to define them adequately, and failed to find alternatives when the large-scale industrial projects it had envisioned did not materialize as planned.[9]:275
Articles and papers[21]

"Contesting Greek Exceptionalism: the political economy of the current crisis" (Working Paper, 2010 for the 2011 London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory-British School at Athens Joint Conference) PDF
"Homo economicus and the reconstruction of political economy: six theses on the role of values in economics" (Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 29, pp. 893–908, 2005)
"Capital flows and speculative attacks in prospective EU member states" (with Heather Gibson, Economics of Transition Volume 12, Issue 3, pp. 559–586, September 2004)
"A Unifying Framework for Analysing Offsetting Capital Flows and Sterilisation: Germany and the ERM" (with Sophocles Brissimis and Heather Gibson, International Journal of Finance & Economics, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 63–78, 2002)
"Internal vs External Financing of Acquisitions: Do Managers Squander Retained Profits" (with Andrew Dickerson and Heather Gibson, Studies in Economics, 1996; Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2000)
"Are Aggregate Consumption Relationships Similar Across the European Union" (with Alan Carruth and Heather Gibson, Regional Studies, Volume 33, Issue 1, 1999)
"Business Cycle Correspondence in the European Union" (Empirica – Journal of European Economics, 1998)
"Takeover Risk and the Market for Corporate Control: The Experience of British Firms in the 1970s and 1980" (with Andrew Dickerson and Heather Gibson, 1998) PDF
"The Political Economy of Social Democratic Economic Policies: The Pasok Experiment in Greece" (Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 1998)
"Deterring Takeover: Evidence from a Large Panel of UK Firms" (Empirica – Journal of European Economics, 1997)
"The Impact of Acquisitions on Company Performance: Evidence from a Large Panel of UK Firms" (with Andrew Dickerson and Heather Gibson, Oxford Economic Papers, New Series, Volume 49, Number 3, pp. 344–361, July 1997)
"Short-Termism and Underinvestment: The Influence of Financial Systems" (with Andrew Dickerson and Heather Gibson, The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, Volume 63, Issue 4, pp. 351–67, 1995)
"The scope and limits of financial liberalisation in developing countries: A critical survey" (Journal of Development Studies, 1994)
"Income inequality in corporatist and liberal economies: a comparison of trends within OECD countries" (International Review of Applied Economics, 1994)
"Testing a Flow Model of Capital Flight in Five European Countries" (with Heather Gibson, The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, Volume 61, Issue 2, pp. 144–166, June 1993)
"European Monetary Union and Macroeconomic Policy in Southern Europe: the Case for Positive Integration" (Journal of Public Policy, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp. 249–273, July 1991)

See also

Cabinet of Alexis Tsipras
Greek government-debt crisis

References

Hellenic Parliament: MPs' contact details Note: Modern Greek middle names are typically a patronymic in the genitive case; thus, Stefanou from his father's name, Stefanos.
Hope, Kevin (28 January 2015). "Tsipras picks anti-austerity professor as Greek finance minister". Financial Times. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
Smith, Helena (18 June 2015). "Euclid Tsakalotos: Greece's secret weapon in credit negotiations". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
Κατσαντώνη, Χριστίνα, «ΕυκλειδηΣ ΤσακαλωτοΣ: Ο ανθρωποΣ στη "σκια" του Γ.Βαρουφακη», The Times of Change Magazine Τρίτη, 07 Ιουλίου 2015, retrieved 7 July 2015
Khan, Mehreen (6 July 2015). "Meet Euclid Tsakalotos, the man who has replaced Yanis Varoufakis as Greece's new finance minister". The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
Rayner, Gordon, "Profile: Euclid Tsakalotos, the Leeds United fan now in charge of saving the euro, The Daily Telegraph, 07 July 2015, retrieved 8 July 2015.
Savaricas, Nicholas (6 July 2015). "Greece debt crisis: Euclid Tsakalotos - the new finance minister with one of the most challenging jobs in the EU". The Independent. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
"Alternate Foreign Minister for International Economic Relations". Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 28 June 2015. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
Tsakalotos, Euclid, Heather Gibson, ed., Alternative Economic Strategies: The Case of Greece (Aldershot, Avebury Publishers: 1991), ISBN 1856281833
Bird, Mike (6 July 2015). "Meet Euclid Tsakalotos, the Oxford-educated economist set to become Greece's new finance minister". Business Insider. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
Euclid Tsakalotos: National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. uoa.academia.edu. Retrieved 6 July 2015
(Greek) The Greek Government syriza.gr. Retrieved 6 July 2015
"SYRIZA's shadow cabinet to exercise 'hands-on opposition'". Ekathimerini. 4 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
Cosgrave, Jenny (6 May 2015). "Euclid Tsakalotos, the new 'friendly face' of Greece?". CNBC. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
Minihan, Mary (7 March 2015). "Syriza appeals for European solidarity at Sinn Féin ardfheis". The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
Chrysopoulos, Philip (27 April 2015). "Varoufakis Downsized as Tsipras Forms New Greek Negotiating Team". Greek Reporter. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
Leivada, Danae (7 July 2015). "Can Greece's New Finance Minister Succeed Where Varoufakis Couldn't?". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
Treanor, Jill (7 July 2015). "Greece's new finance minister has to remind himself: 'No triumphalism'". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
"Greek finance minister: 'I don't know if we did the right thing' – video". The Guardian. 16 July 2015. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
Skordas, Aggelos (28 April 2015). "Euclid Tsakalotos: Who Is the Greek Economist that Sidelined Superstar Yanis Varoufakis". Greek Reporter. Retrieved 6 July 2015.

Academia.edu "[Euclid Tsakalotos http://uoa.academia.edu/EuclidTsakalotos]", retrieved 7 July 2015

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