Manos Matsaganis

• PhD (Bristol); MSc in Health Economics (York); BA Economics (Athens University of Economics and Business))
• Professor at Politecnico di Milano

Given that the self-employed, and especially gig workers, are less eligible for a range of social benefits and are at a higher risk of poverty, it is welcome that the European Pillar of Social Rights has called for the right to adequate social protection to be extended to all workers. Nevertheless, self-employment also poses challenges for public p...

This chapter examines the idea that a distinct Southern European welfare model exists within European social protection systems. It focuses on the core social protection pillars: pensions, labor market policies, social assistance, health care, social care, and family policies. The chapter looks at the reforms in welfare systems in Italy, Portugal,...

This chapter examines the idea that a distinct Southern European welfare model exists within European social protection systems. It focuses on the core social protection pillars: pensions, labor market policies, social assistance, health care, social care, and family policies. The chapter looks at the reforms in welfare systems in Italy, Portugal,...

The Covid-19 existential crisis has brought social protection and the welfare state back into the limelight. Whereas in good times welfare support mostly operates in the background, in hard times it comes to the surface. • Like the Great Recession, the pandemic also exposed fault lines. Fragmented welfare states with a poor safety nets and largely...

The book is the Europe volume in an international series on income, wealth, consumption, well-being, and inequality. It focuses on the European Union (EU) and its member countries and other European countries that are in close association with it. The book provides an overview of economic and social trends in the countries and in country groupings....

This chapter reviews how material conditions improved in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece over many decades from the postwar period to the onset of the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession; how Southern Europe lost ground in the 2010s; and how changes in living standards affected different population groups. The chapter unfolds in 15 short sec...

This chapter is an attempt to sketch the broader context into which regional development for ‘left behind’ places, and the potential for their regeneration via ‘slow tourism’, the main focus of this book, is located. This context does not lend itself to easy generalisations. This becomes clear in Section One, which summarises recent changes in the...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the relative importance of annuities and transfers in Greek retirement benefits and to assess their impact on intergenerational and intragenerational equity. We analyse a large sample of private sector workers retiring in 2008. Adopting a longitudinal approach, we compute the net present value of contributions p...

This paper deals with the question of how the social safety net in Greece responded to, and was transformed by, the social emergency of the 2010s. The outbreak of the Eurozone crisis caught Greek welfare woefully unprepared for what was to come. Thereafter, as the recession fuelled the “demand” for social protection, the austerity reduced its “supp...

During the early 2010s, creditor states and EU institutions demanded that the Southern states of the eurozone liberalise their labour markets to facilitate internal devaluation and export-led recoveries. With some variation, the Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian governments complied. This article explains why such a strategy of internal devalu...

Manos Matsaganis provides an account of the most severe crisis of the Great Recession: that of Greece. He explains the conditions at the start of the crisis and how the situation developed. Greece was the first Euro area member to request a bailout, which was granted in return for massive fiscal consolidation and structural reforms. Matsaganis expl...

This chapter aims to provide an assessment of the distributional implications of the economic crisis in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania in the period 2009−2013. On the one hand, the recession has caused unemployment to rise and household incomes to fall, which are both changes that raise the demand for social protecti...

This chapter makes use of the first effort to construct cross-country comparable reference budgets in Europe to show what the large cross-national differences in living standards imply in practice for the adequacy of incomes at the level of the at-risk-of-poverty threshold. The budgets show that, in the poorest EU Member States, even adequate food...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616696.2018.1494300?journalCode=reus20 The paper addresses a topic still largely under-researched in comparative welfare state literature: the role of right parties in the reform of last resort safety nets. More precisely, the study investigates minimum income schemes’ reforms promoted during the Great...

This chapter reviews the changes in labour market policies under conditions of harsh austerity and mass unemployment in Greece in 2010-2015. Three policy areas are covered: income support to the unemployed, active labour market policies, and employment protection legislation. We find that labour market policies in Greece have failed to rise to the...

Introduction One of the most surprising features of the social situation in Greece over the past few years has been the almost complete failure of the social safety net to cope with the fallout from the recession, the most severe in the euro area. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘supply’ of social protection in the country fell...

This book investigates whether, and if so how, the patterns of change of labour market policies in EU member states have altered since the emergence in 2010 of reinforced pressures on public spending (‘fiscal austerity’). More specifically, the book explores, through national case studies, whether retrenchment or expansion have taken place; whether...

Europe’s response to the sovereign debt crisis in Southern Europe has been premised on the idea that these states can return to growth through internal devaluation and fiscal consolidation. This article explores the distributive consequences of that strategy in Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. We argue that standard measures of poverty do not ca...

Grexit was narrowly averted in summer 2015. Nevertheless, the view that Greece might be better off outside the Euro area has never really gone away. Moreover, although Marine Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency was frustrated in May 2017, in Italy a disparate coalition, encompassing Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle as well as Matteo Salvin...

Μια λεπτομερής καταγραφή του προβλήματος της ακραίας φτώχειας στη Ελλάδα, με αξιολόγηση των πολιτικών πρόνοιας που έχουν εφαρμοστεί και διατύπωση συγκεκριμένων, ρεαλιστικών προτάσεων για την αντιμετώπισή του.

In recent years, poverty and anti-poverty measures have gained new momentum in Southern and Eastern European countries, which have traditionally featured weak social safety nets. This was the result of three main factors: i) increased “problem pressure” in most countries, as a consequence of the recession and austerity measures; ii) in some cases,...

Estimating the impact of the crisis on income distribution requires up-to-date information. Due to the complexity of income surveys such as EU-SILC, income data usually become available with considerable delay. In this context, micro-simulation models are an appropriate and widely used alternative to bridge the gap in official data, allowing for an...

The Greek economic crisis has attracted much attention during recent years, as its depth and duration have been far greater than in crises experienced elsewhere. Structural similarities and peculiarities between the Greek economy and fishery sector are identified in terms of the large number of small enterprises and artisanal vessels, as well as in...

[O]rdinary Greeks intuitively understood better than many outsiders that the country had little future cut off from Europe.

This research note aims to explore how housing allowances and mortgage interest tax relief have evolved in recent years, against the background of falling disposable incomes and rising housing costs. The analysis focuses on seven EU countries (Greece, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK), covering a range of housing market d...

This Research Note: • Reviews the literature on non-standard employment, and the definitions of it that have been adopted. • Examines the extent of non-standard employment in the EU and the way it has changed over the recent past, especially over the crisis period. • Considers social security systems in the different EU Member States as they apply...

In recent years, poverty and anti‐poverty measures have gained new momentum in both Southern and Eastern European countries, which have traditionally featured weak social safety nets. This was the result of two main factors: i) increased “problem pressure” in most countries, as a consequence of the recession and austerity measures; ii) pressure fro...

The objective of this paper is to identify the relative importance of annuities and transfers in Greek retirement benefits and draw conclusions as to their impact on intergenerational and intragenerational equity. As one of the core objectives of a pension system is to redistribute income over the life span of individuals, their equity effects are...

Youth unemployment in Greece is currently over 50%, second only to Spain. This chapter reviews recent developments in the country and policy options. The high rate of youth unemployment is partly due to adverse macroeconomic conditions affecting all age groups. The legacy of the recession and the austerity has been enormous loss in output and steep...

Southern European welfare states are under stress. On the one hand, the recession has been causing unemployment to rise and incomes to fall. On the other hand, austerity has affected the capacity of welfare states to protect those affected. This paper assesses the distributional implications of the crisis in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal from 2...

The severe economic crisis that has been affecting Greece since 2009 is having an unprecedented impact in terms of job and income losses, and is widely perceived to have a comparably significant effect in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. This article provides an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) the latter is the ca...

European welfare states are under considerable stress. On the one hand, the recession has caused unemployment to rise and household incomes to fall, which both raise the demand for social protection. On the other hand, austerity policies and programme reforms affect the capacity of welfare states to provide social protection. This paper aims to pro...

The failure of public institutions to rise to the occasion by preventing the economic crisis from mutating into social disaster has bred disillusionment with parliamentary democracy and brought the far right and extreme left into the political mainstream.

There are a significant number of people on very low incomes in the EU despite a social security system which is intended in most countries to prevent the income of families from falling below an acceptable level. This Research Note first examines the number of people involved across the EU, focusing on those with income below 60% of the median, wh...

Poverty and income inequality have worsened since the onset of the crisis. While the design of fiscal measures has mitigated the burden sharing of fiscal adjustment, as the recession has deepened unemployment has risen, earnings have declined and social tensions have increased. Getting people back to work and supporting the most vulnerable remain p...

The social cost of the Greek crisis has been dramatic. This article analyses the role of the country's system of social protection. It begins by briefly reviewing the most salient aspects of the crisis and the austerity. It then examines the role of the welfare state as a social «shock absorber», and argues that its capacity to mitigate the social...

Since the beginning of the great recession, poverty has, not unexpectedly, increased in many Member States of the European Union. More worrying in view of its structural implications is the observation that in the years before the financial crisis, in most European countries poverty rates for the non-elderly population have stagnated or even increa...

We compare the distributional effects of policy changes presented as fiscal consolidation measures in nine EU countries that experienced large budget deficits following the financial crisis of the late 2000s and subsequent economic downturn, using the EU microsimulation model EUROMOD. The nine countries, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithu...

The current Greek crisis and the government’s fiscal consolidation effort have elevated tax evasion to one of the most crucial policy issues in the domestic debate. The paper attempts to shed light on one aspect of the phenomenon, namely its distributional implications. We compare a large panel data sample of personal income tax returns in 2006-201...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely thought to be having a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this was the case in 2010, the first year of the Greek crisis. We distinguish between two interrelated factors: on the one hand, t...

As every European who occasionally switches on their TV set must be aware, Greece is in the throes of a dramatic crisis. This started off in 2009 as a fiscal crisis, soon turned into a sovereign debt crisis, and finally mutated into a full-blown recession, unprecedented in depth and duration. By late 2012, the Greek economy had already been in rece...

The current Greek crisis started off in 2009 as a fiscal crisis, soon turned into a sovereign debt crisis, then mutated into a full-blown recession, unprecedented in depth and duration. The article offers an early analysis of the impact of the crisis on the labour market and the distribution of incomes, showing that the need for social protection i...

This paper analyzes the response of earnings to payroll tax rates using a cohort-based reform in Greece. In late 1992, Greece passed a law increasing sharply the cap on payroll taxes for all individuals starting to work and pay social security taxes on or after January 1st, 1993. As a result, workers who entered the system before 1993 pay employer...

The paper examines the relationship between the severe economic crisis facing Greece and the country’s social protection system, arguing that this relationship is ambivalent. On one level, the welfare state itself has contributed in a far from trivial way to the fiscal crisis of the state, with its various failures including huge deficits in key pr...

Although basic pension had failed for years to catch the imagination of policy makers in Greece, the severe crisis raging since November 2009 has caused it to be quickly put on the agenda. In May 2010 the government committed to a harsh austerity programme, aimed at fiscal consolidation, in return for a rescue package easing the sovereign debt cris...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related factors: on the one hand, the austerity measures taken t...

This brief paper aims to describe key aspects of employment in Greece, to provide some information on levels of, and trends in, non-standard work in Greece, to elaborate on the nature and characteristics of different types of such work, to analyse existing social policies to protect the workers concerned, and to speculate on future developments.

We compare the distributional effects of austerity measures that have been introduced in 6 EU countries in the period of large government budget deficits following the 2007-8 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. We explore the effects of policy changes presented as austerity measures in Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and th...

Figari F, Matsaganis M, Sutherland H. Are European social safety nets tight enough? Coverage and adequacy of Minimum Income schemes in 14 EU countries This study explored and compared the effectiveness of Minimum Income (MI) schemes for persons of working age in the European Union (EU). Using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD, we estimated...

This study analyses the financial well-being of elderly people across Europe. Using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD, which facilitates the identification of minimum pension schemes in a comparable way across countries, we show the extent to which these schemes serve to reduce the risk of poverty among elderly. The main findings show that...

The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the effectiveness of Minimum Income (MI) schemes in protecting people of working age from poverty in the European Union. Using the EU-wide microsimulation model EUROMOD, we investigate (a) coverage and (b) adequacy of MI schemes in 18 countries. In contrast to previous comparative studies of MI be...

Even though interest in non-take up of social benefits is considerable in many European countries, the topic is under-researched in southern Europe. This article provides preliminary estimates of the extent of non-take up of two pairs of means-tested retirement benefits in Greece and Spain. The benefits examined are: (1) the minimum pension supplem...

This paper analyzes the response of earnings to payroll tax rates using a cohort-based reform in Greece. All individuals who started working on or after 1993 face permanently a much higher earnings cap for payroll taxes, creating a large and permanent discontinuity in marginal payroll tax rates by date of entry in the labor force for upper earnings...

ABSTRACT : This paper looks at how well Finland performs in high growth entrepreneurship and uses data from the Global Entrepreneurship monitor to benchmark Finland against other European countries. It is found that Finland’s prevalence rate of high growth entrepreneurial activity lags significantly behind most of its European and all of its Scandi...

The paper estimates the distributional implications of income tax evasion in Hungary based on a random sample of administrative tax records of 230 thousand individuals. Gross incomes in the administrative tax records are compared with those in a nationally representative household budget survey, assuming that tax-evaders are more likely to report t...

Health expenditure data are known to be afflicted by restricted range, zero values, skewness and kurtosis. Several methods for modelling such data have been suggested in the literature to cope with these problems. This paper compares the performance of several alternative estimators, including two-part models and generalised linear models. The depe...

The gradualist approach towards an unconditional basic income for all involves the introduction or extension of universal benefits in place of current income-tested ones. Such a policy shift might cause higher fiscal costs or adverse distributional effects, at least in the short run. However, this need not always be the case. Using the tax-benefit...

Health expenditure data are known to be afflicted by restricted range, zero values, skewness and kurtosis. Several methods for modelling such data have been suggested in the literature to cope with these problems. This paper compares the performance of several alternative estimators, including two-part models and generalized linear models. The depe...

Fiscal welfare, i.e. the use of the tax system to achieve social policy goals, is assuming ever greater importance throughout Europe and beyond. In housing, the favourable tax treatment of mortgage interest repayments has often co-existed alongside public programmes of housing benefit or social housing. Although the distributional effects of tax ex...

Even though Greek pensions are particularly unsustainable and inequitable, recent attempts at significant reform have ended in failure, mostly because of union opposition. The article draws on research into the competing role of narrow versus encompassing interests, in order to analyse union policy on pensions in the light of membership composition...

The paper examines the effect of family transfers on child poverty in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Family transfers are defined as to include non-contributory child benefits, contributory family allowances and tax credits or allowances. The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where public support to poo...

The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where public assistance to low-income families with children is often meagre or not available at all. The paper examines the effect of income transfers to families in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal using a benefit-tax model. The distributional impact of actual progra...

Selectivity emerged as the core of a new social policy paradigm in Greece when a new ‘modernising’ government took office in 1996. Though it was adopted energetically, its real impact eventually proved negligible, except for an initial flutter of activity. The article argues that its failure as a recipe for welfare reform was inevitable. The nature...

The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where the subsidiary role of the State in matters of family policy has implied that programmes of public assistance to poor families with children are often meagre or not available at all. The paper examines the effect of family transfers (used broadly to include contri...

The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where the subsidiary role of the State in matters of family policy has implied that programmes of public assistance to poor families with children are often meagre or not available at all. The paper examines the effect of family transfers ( used broadly to include contr...

El papel marginal de la asistencia social y la ausencia de programas de rentas mínimas han sido considerados como rasgos definitorios del modelo de bienestar de la Europa del Sur. Sin embargo, a lo largo de la década de los años 90 se han producido innovaciones significativas en este campo. El artículo lleva a cabo un análisis de los últimos desarr...

The marginal role of social assistance and the absence of minimum income programmes have long been thought to constitute defining characteristics of the southern European model of welfare. Nevertheless, over the 1990s significant innovations in this field have taken place. The paper aims to contribute to the analysis of recent developments by criti...

The marginal role of social assistance and the absence of minimum income programmes have long been thought to constitute defining characteristics of the southern European model of welfare. Nevertheless, over the 1990s significant innovations in this field have taken place. The article aims to contribute to the analysis of recent developments by cri...

This paper aims to analyse the social assistance systems in five South European countries: France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. After reviewing the existing system of social assistance in each country, we apply a consistent methodology in order to estimate its impact on income distribution, poverty and target efficiency.

The recent pension legislation (Law 3029/2002) concluded an entire season, inaugurated six years earlier when a new ‘modernizing’ government took office with pension reform high on the agenda. The legislation, though successful in temporarily defusing the issue, can only be described as timid and ineffective if judged against the magnitude of the p...

This paper aims to analyse the social assistance systems in five South European countries: France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. After reviewing the existing system of social assistance in each country, we apply a consistent methodology in order to estimate its impact on income distribution, poverty and target efficiency.

Until the mid 1990s, the notion of Social Europe was primarily associated with the introduction of binding supranational rules aimed at safeguarding and possibly upgrading the social protection systems of the Member States. The political and institutional obstacles to such kind of rules were well known in practice and well understood in theory - es...

The marginal role of welfare and the non-existence of mínimum income programmes have been for a long time the key features of the Welfare States in Southern Europe. However, in the 1990s significant innovations have ocurred in that field. This article intends to contribute to the analysis of the most recent developments by analysing in detail the e...

The poverty-reducing impact of social transfers is weaker in Greece than in other EU countries, primarily due to the absence of a minimum social safety net. The paper examines the extent and structure of extreme poverty in Greece and attempts to assess the likely effects of the introduction of a minimum income scheme, under alternative scenarios ab...

Recent research has shown that the traditional view of social welfare in Southern Europe as ‘rudimentary’ is a misreading of its distinct nature: welfare arrangements in the region do not ‘lag behind’ as a whole, rather they suffer from serious imbalances that cause inequities and inefficiencies. The article focuses on Greece and Spain, two countri...

Recent research has shown that the traditional view of social welfare in Southern Europe as 'rudimentary' is a misreading of its distinct nature: welfare arrangements in the region do not 'lag behind' as a whole, rather they suffer from serious imbalances that cause inequities and inefficiencies. The article focuses on Greece and Spain, two countri...

Social assistance is a largely neglected part of the welfare state in Greece. Recent surveys of social assistance arrangements in developed countries from a comparative perspective tend to portray Greece as the most ‘rudimentary’ member of the ‘rudimentary’ group of countries or social assistance regimes, i.e. Southern Europe. While not entirely un...

The report of an international experts' committee, recently invited by the Ministry of Health to review Greece's health care system, recommended the creation of a network of family doctors, reimbursed on a capitation basis. The committee also proposed that family doctors should manage a budget for the purchase, on behalf of their patients, of speci...

Bleeding from oesophageal varices is an uncommon but potentially fatal condition that often leads to expensive hospitalizations in intensive care or high-dependency units. To assess the clinical and economic impact of this condition, we have devised a management plan illustrating current clinical practice in the UK. Approximately 6.1 million pounds...