A good insight on the latest Greek socio-political developments

I copy the article which has been retrieved from Globalpost.com and conducted by Ken Maguire

I think that the article is extremely objective in terms of the facts provision. I would add that the main source of insecurity for the people is derived by the government itself (both the elected ex government of Pasok and the current transition government) which do not hold any social legitimacy at all among the majority of Greeks. 

 

Where Greeks hide their savings

With safes and Swiss accounts, rich Greeks could stand to profit from the crisis.

Demonstrators burn an EU flag during a protest in Thessaloniki on November 17, 2011 against austerity measures demanded by the new unity government to persuade its creditors to release bankruptcy-saving loans. Greeks are draining local banks in favor of Swiss accounts, London property and cash stashed in home safes. (Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images)

An aspiring local Russian civic society project to combat corruption

I reproduce the article by Alexander Elkin and Aleksey Shlyapuzhnikov which is retrieved from the Transparency International Blog 

Alexander Elkin and Aleksey Shlyapuzhnikov of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiative Transparency International Russia (TI Russia) talk about engaging the public in anti-corruption work with the help of new technologies.

Several years ago, an intellectual movement called Lebed (which stands for “the swan” in Russian) was created with the aim to bring together intellectuals, journalists, scientists and public figures of the Vladimir region in Russia. The goal of the movement was to unite the efforts of modern thinking people of the region to develop tools for efficient civic activism. From the very beginning the movement was in contact with TI Russia, because the main field for civic activism in Russia in recent years is anti-corruption work.

Is there a policy consensus among political scientists on anything?

This question is attempted to be answered by a promising initiative on global markets which launched few weeks ago by the Chicago Booth Business School.

Every week a panel of 40 carefully selected prominent academics and technocrats will be asked one policy question. The respondents will be able to signify their view by answering to the policy question by stating whether they "agree", "extremely agree", feel "uncertain", "disagree", or "extremely disagree" plus mentioning on a scale of 0 to 10 the confidence of their response.  The panel experts will also be able to offer a sort comment on the policy question so as to strengthen their response.

The initiative seems quite interesting although by some might be argued that policy questions and mechanisms demanding an agree/disagree type of answer might be oversimplistic and thus lead to non-useful observations.

The site with the panel policy surveys is accessible from here. Remember that one question will be raised per week thus is recommended to sign up for the automatic feed to receive the updates!

The most excellent depiction of the EU debt crisis

I found an exceptional presentation of rough  data by various official sources like Eurostat, IMF, World Bank in tables and graphs regarding the macroeconomic situation and the debt crisis the EU is experiencing. The site is knowledge Performance Indicators (KPI) and can be accessed here. Worth a visit! Unfortunately the data cannot be automatically extracted by the KPI Library.

Data digitizer Project - by Open Knowledge Foundation

For the past few weeks I have been trying to digitize some data from scanned pdf files. They are part of the monthly statistical bulletins that the Greek statistical agency recently provides online (access the digital library here). To become more specific, i am interested in about 10 variables on social benefits to analyse potential political economic cycles. I am using the monthly bulletins so as to capture any monthly (hence really short-term) variation  discover any politically influenced changes before an election. However, a major issue with Greek data is that even when using elementary variables such as CPI it is difficult to find the data digitized and already available to the user in a file that a data processor can use, e.g. CSV. The work becomes more difficult when someone requires monthly data and for years as old as 1970 (as in my case). Thus, the only available option is to sit down and attempt to digitize the data in hand which is a very tedious, time-consuming process that apparently might involve the depreciation of the quality of the data as the human mind is prone to errors regardless of how careful someone is. I have thus been working on that task for about 2 months now. Bear in mind that we are talking about 10 variables times 12 months per year times 41 years which makes a total of 4920 data records!! This has been the manual way of digitizing data.

Yesterday I came across a massive project (massive in terms of its potential strength when is completed) that is under way by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF). It is a data digitizer, a software that is intended to automatically digitize data from eg Pdf files and incorporate them into a spreadsheet (CSV) while keeping the format of the cells and columns as much as possible. The initiative seems to be extremely intelligent and impressive. As anyone who has come across the scenario of digitizing data manually could say with comfort, this project when finished and if successful can lead to absolute increase in the numbers of existing and ready to manipulate datasets as many non treatable pdf data will become available for statistical analysis or application development in a matter of machine seconds!

You may view all the details of the project of Data Digitizer HERE

Also there is a small demo displaying some features of the under construction project HERE

Having suffered the process of manually digitizing data I want to thank the minds and the hands behind that project.

 

An interesting view on Eurozone crisis resolution

I read a very alternative perspective on how the Eurozone crisis may be overcome by exiting the Euro and immediately rejoining by devaluing the new exchange rate. It is a quiet smart policy recommendation and at least to the extent i am aware, completely new. It offers a both politically and economically viable solution to the lack of monetary independence of the Euro indebted countries.

The full article with the analysis of the proposed mechanism by Julian Le Grand might be found here. It's worth a reading.

A truth about the impact of Euro on Intra-EU trade

Few days ago I came across an article entitled "This Chart is the Holy Grail for Understanding Europe" and signed by Joe Weisenthal. While discussing the recent dramatic developments in the EU with Greece and Italy being at the very edge of economic and social stability and in essence flirting with a "default" which could, especially for the case and magnitude of Italy, propagate the financial crisis towards the core of Europe, Joe mentions that primarily and almost solely Germany is the country that has been influenced positively by the EMU through an incline in exports.

I remembered that i had written an essay (2010) on the issue of intra-EU trade and its connection to the implementation of the common currency. You may read the entire essay here.

My main points were:

1) The basic economic gains from the Economic Monetary Unions and hence the Euro zone were the elimination of the transaction costs, the exchange rate certainty that comes with a single currency, and the price transparency since the consumer can compare national with foreign (within the Euro area) prices more easily. As was explained, all lead to a possible increase in trade since these parameters affect the economic environment in a positive way allowing space for extra trading activity.

2)  The prevailing dimension is that Euro does have a positive effect on trade among the Euro zone countries but this is NOT as high as
Rose forecasted (maximum 15 to 20 percent in the long run) and thus the gains from an increase in trade should not be a unique reason for a country to enter the euro area.

3) it was found that entering the euro zone leads to trade creation (not diversion).

4) Lastly, should be noted that although evidence shows a certain increase in trade after the adoption of the Euro among the Euro zone countries, has not been clarified whether this phenomenon is solely caused by the Euro or other policies that led to the establishment of the European Monetary Union.

5) Hence, our main consensus is that Euro should lead to a limited increase in trade among participant countries but is not statistically significant that the main reason for this increase is the introduction of the common currency.

Hence, given the observations that I made on the essay, intra-EU trade seems to be affected slightly positively by the introduction of the European currency while even that is argued by some economists.

The truth about the euro is that only core euro zone states like Germany (and even perhaps only Germany) are expanding exports to the other euro allies. The latter (especially those at the periphery) who tend to be less competitive for the beginning of the euro advventure find themeslves losing exports to other euro states.

Freedom of Information Requests in the UK

Today I became aware of this ultimate website whatdotheyknow.com. Apparently, by using the platform of the site anyone may submit an online request to any UK public institution. Covered by the Freedom of Information Act, the public institutions are obliged to respond within a predetermined time interval regardless of the type of the query or the characteristics of the citizen who submitted it. Thus, the role of the portal is essential to provide the environment where the status of the requests will be continuously monitored by users who, amongst others, will be in position to check the speed of the response or the quality of the answer etc.

I personally found the site extremely innovative and interesting, despite its simplicity. It is a true tool or weapon for any active citizen and a good way of increasing the transparency of the public bodies.