‘On the right track,’ says Nobel Prize winner
As railway workers went on strike yesterday to protest staff cuts aimed at cutting government spending, Nobel Prize-winning economist Christopher Pissarides said that Greece ‘is on the right track.’ ‘There is a lot to be done and more long-term reforms are needed to avoid such a crisis in the future and to cope with the current crisis,’ Pissarides told reporters in Nicosia yesterday. ‘At last, the average Greek has understood that there is a major crisis and something has to be done about it. It is a unique chance for a government that wants to put forward difficult reforms.’ The support given to the euro by Europe’s largest economies countries will help the currency survive the current turbulence, while the likelihood of Spain failing is ‘a very low-probability event,’ he said. Last year, Pissarides shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics with Dale Mortensen and Peter Diamond. Pissarides, the first Cypriot to win a Nobel Prize, said he has agreed to a proposal from Cyprus’s Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis to be an economic adviser to the Cypriot government.
