Competitiveness productivity and trade: with special reference to Greece.

The current monograph is a collection of essays on the productivity-trade nexus. In a world, where many trade impediments have been removed a country’s ability to succeed in international markets is associated with its ability to improve cost competitiveness. A main objective of the book is to check the empirical validity of the neoclassical theories of trade and specialization. Why countries produce what they produce? Ioannis attempts to provide an assessment to these questions paying special attention to nation-wide factor endowments and productivity performance. Throughout the whole book productivity is a key measure, but after all is productivity just “manna from heaven” or is it something that countries can stimulate with the passage of time? Chapter four analyzes the sources of productivity growth recognizing among others that for a technologically laggard country, imitation of technological advancements, already implemented somewhere else, are rather important engines. Although, the present book emphasizes to Greece, the reader can obtain lessons with respect to many other countries, especially those that comprise of the so- called periphery of Europe.