ANGELOS ANGELOPOULOS

Angelos Angelopoulos was Professor of Public Finance at the University of Athens (1938-1946), Director of the Supreme Economic Council (1932-1945), Deputy Minister of Finance in the national unity government of G. Papandreou in 1944, Governor of the National Bank of Greece (1974-1979) and member of the Academy of Athens since 1975. He studied economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business and pursued further studies at the University of Leipzig, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1929, and at the University of Paris. During the Occupation period, he took part in the Greek Resistance by joining the National Liberation Front (EAM) and served as Finance Secretary of the Political Committee of National Liberation (“Mountain Government”). After the liberation of Greece, he paid the price for participating in the Greek Resistance by being dismissed from the University of Athens, and left for Geneva, where he resumed his teaching and writing work. A professor at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences since 1961 and elected rector in 1967-1968, he resigned his posts in protest against the military dictatorship. He produced a significant body of work on public finance, tax policy and economic growth. His books Direct Taxation in Greece (1933) and The Public Debt of Greece (1937) are today considered classics. He was founder and publisher (1946-1967) of Nea Oikonomia (“New Economy”), one of the most important economic journals in post-war Greece, which was a bustling hub of new ideas and a point of reference for younger economists. In 1990, with Greece on the brink of fiscal collapse, he presided over the committee of seven experts that prepared the Report on the Stabilisation and Growth of the Greek Economy, which identified the causes of Greece’s macroeconomic imbalances and recommended measures to address them effectively.