1. Aristos Doxiadis

2. Sources of ‘otherness’
 Deep stereotypes
 Recent stereotypes
 Real differences
 Misconceptions

3. Deep stereotypes
 Schools, families, armies
 Turks
 Bulgarians
 Germany does not fit
 WWII, but …
 Europe
 Migrants
 Cars and football

4. Recent stereotypes:
Populist
 Collapse of trust
 Trust in EU: 60% (Nov 09) to 19% (Jun 10)
 Blame for crisis
 Occupation of Greece
 Domination of Eurozone
 Cruelty

6. Recent stereotypes:
Moderate
 Calvinist
 Schuld and punishment
 Rule bound
 (and hypocritical: Siemens, Landesbanken)
 Historical trauma
 Hyperinflation
 Power play
 Export more, buy cheap assets, gather
savings

7. My hope
Because stereotypes are recent,
And constructed by elites,
They can be reversed by politics.
But for this,
We must understand our real
differences
And accept different roles in the EU
economy

8. Real differences

9. Real differences:
Proportion of self-employed
Year 1960 1995 2008
Germany 22.8 10.7 11.7
Greece 68.5 46.1 35.1
OECD -- 19.4 15.8

10. Real differences:
Share of wages in GDP (2007)
Germany Greece
Compensation of
Employees
48.5% 35.2%
Gr. Operating
Surplus & Mixed
40.0% 53.3%
Income
Taxes on
production &
11.5% 11.5%
imports

11. Real differences:
Not working time,
but part time workers
Germany Greece EU
Total 20.8% 4.5% 18.2%
Male 5.8% 2.3% 6.6%
Female 39.5% 8.1% 33.5%
Proportion of total employment, 2002

12. Real differences:
Public sector employment?

13. Real differences
Physicians per 1000 population

14. Real differences
Nurses per 1000 population

15. Real differences
 Technical education
 Home ownership
 Family polyergy
 Stay at home with parents

16. A counter narrative
 Underachieving Germans
 Prefer to be nurses, not doctors
 Do not invest in proper education
 No real assets
 Prefer salary to risk
 Part-time workers
 Low family cohesion
 Plausible ?

17. Culture Matters
Germany Greece
Cooperation Selfishness
Rules Opportunity
Programme Flexibility
State Family
In an industrial world,
‘German’ values have a competitive advantage.
Will it be always so?

18. Mismatched rationalities
Paper assets of the core countries
and
Real estate of the periphery

19. Misconceptions
1. Governments need discipline
 But private sector is self regulating
2. Banks must be unified
 But only states and banks transmit deficits
3. Market regulation must converge
 Because competitiveness is a matter of
barriers
4. What next?
 Macroeconomic imbalances

20. Strategies for eurozone stability
 Convergence
 Fiscal and banking
 Targeted diversification
 Industrial policy/ Marshall Plan
 Transnational integration
 Foreign direct investment
 Transparency
 To understand each other