KYRIAKOS VARVARESSOS

Kyriakos Varvaressos was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Athens (1923-1949), member of the Academy of Athens since 1936, Economic Advisor (1928-1933), Deputy Governor (1933-1939) and then Governor of the Bank of Greece (1939-1946), Finance Minister in the E. Venizelos and A. Papanastasiou governments (1932), Finance Minister in the government-in-exile of Emmanuel Tsouderos (1941-1943), Vice-President and Minister of Supplies in the government of P. Voulgaris (1945), and Executive Director on the first Board of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where he remained until his death. He studied law at the University of Athens (1902-1906) and, on a University of Athens scholarship, continued with economics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (1908-1909) and the Humboldt University of Berlin (1909-1910). He played a decisive role in the formulation and conduct of economic policy in crucial times of Greek economic history in the first half of the 20th century. As a senior official at the newly founded Ministry of National Economy (1911-1920), he laid the foundations of a modern statistical service. As economic advisor to the National Bank of Greece, he participated in the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Bank of Greece, to which he moved in 1928. He negotiated the settlement of Greece’s external debt after the exit of the drachma from the Gold Standard and the default of 1932. During World War II, he managed the acute problems of war financing and medical and food relief to the Greek people. He participated in the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which hammered out a new post-war international monetary order, and made a crucial contribution to the first post-war efforts to stabilise and reconstruct the Greek economy. Thoroughly knowledgeable of the Greek economy, he prepared, as economic advisor to the N. Plastiras government, his famous Report on the Greek Economic Problem (1952).