Costas Lapavitsas

Costas Lapavitsas (Greek: Kώστας Λαπαβίτσας) is a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and was elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament for the left-wing Syriza party in the January 2015 general election.^[1] He subsequently defected to the Popular Unity in August 2015.

In 1982, he obtained a master's degree at the London School of Economics, followed in 1986 by a PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London. Since 1999 he has taught Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, first as a lecturer, and since 2008 as a professor.

Costas Lapavitsas is known for his criticism of the modern Western financial system,^[2] particularly the Greek government-debt crisis, the European debt crisis and the European Union.^[3] He is also a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian. In 2007 he founded Research on Money and Finance (RMF) an international network of political economists focusing on money, finance and the evolution of contemporary capitalism.

As early as 2011, Lapavitsas, as well as some other Greek economists, has been highly eurosceptic, advocating for Greece abandoning the euro and returning to its former national currency, the drachma, as a response to the Greek government-debt crisis.^[4] On 2 March 2015 Lapavitsas wrote in the Guardian that releasing Greek people from austerity and simultaneously avoiding a major falling-out with the eurozone is an impossible task for the new government of Greece.^[5]

Bibliography

• (Greek) Word for word: Writings on the Greek Crisis (Athens: Topos Press, 2014). ISBN 978-9-60499-096-2
• Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All (2013). ISBN 9781781681411
• Crisis in the Eurozone (2012). ISBN 9781844679690
• (Spanish) El capitalismo financiarizado Expansión y crisis (2009). ISBN 978-84-936641-8-3
• editor with Makoto Noguchi, Beyond Market-Driven Development (Routledge, 2004). ISBN 978-0-415-64606-2
• Social Foundations of Markets, Money and Credit (Routledge, 2003). ISBN 978-1-13-881080-8
• co-author with Makoto Itoh, Political Economy of Money and Finance. (London-Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). ISBN 9780333665220

External links

• Official website (Greek)
• Greece: Phase Two interview
• Costas Lapavitsas at SOAS
• Research on Money and Finance
• Terms of office of Costas Lapavitsas at the Hellenic Parliament (English)
• Costas Lapavitsas on the Guardian
• Costas Lapavitsas on BBC

References