The (new) Greek economic miracle

After a devastating decade-long crisis, the very idea of an economic miracle seems like a paradox. Yet it is something that was a reality for two decades in the aftermath of World War II, when the Greek economy was the second fastest-growing in the world, lagging only Japan, with an economic performance that was well above any other traditional economy in the global economic network.

Greece managed to almost double its per capita wealth in less than three decades, outpacing the economies of Northern and Southern Europe, North America and East Asia. A Greek miracle is not only possible, it has already been accomplished once. The question is whether it can be repeated now.

Those two decades of remarkable economic progress in the 1950s and 60s were powered by Greek shipping, construction, industrialization, urbanization on a massive scale and the economy's increasing...