Professor Michalis Psalidopoulos’s new book on the history of modern Greek economic thought achieves two central objectives. First, it develops a definitive narrative of Greek economic thought and practice from the founding of the modern Greek state after the Revolution of 1821 to the present. Second, it provides a reference point from which students of intellectual history can begin more in-depth analyses of specific events or periods in Greek history. Psalidopoulos organizes the book along a historical, sequential timeline, tracing the evolution of economic ideas and the influence of European thought on the Greek scene. He also provides substantial biographical detail on the major economists of each era. His approach combines economic and social context with biography and analysis of the ideas that shaped individuals and their epoch. Despite its relatively short length (232 pages), the book covers an impressive range. The narrative is clear and engaging, and it offers Greek studies a unified framework for the periodization of economic literature from the establishment of the Greek state until 2010. This is an important contribution that will shape future research on modern Greek economic thought.

Psalidopoulos’s chapters periodize two centuries of history as follows: (1) before the Greek Revolution of 1821; (2) the first period of the Greek state, 1821 to 1862; (3) the influence of French economic liberalism, 1862 to 1897; (4) the influence of the German Historical School, 1897 to 1944; (5) the institutionalization of economics, 1920 to 1971; (6) the Anglo-Saxon influence after the Second World War, 1944 to 1971; and (7) the modern period, 1971 to 2010. This outline immediately illustrates that periodization is never a simple linear division of time into discrete and autonomous periods. The interwar years, for example, cut across several chapters, highlighting the importance of political developments and the Second World War on the evolution of economics in Greece. During the 1920s, economists from competing schools debated central issues of economic development, government policy, institutional change, and monetary stability. The influence of the German Historical School remained strong in Greece until the Second World War, while Anglo-Saxon approaches became dominant in the postwar period. The book thus invites reflection on how the trajectory of economic thought might have evolved had international events taken another course. For the Greek case, Psalidopoulos demonstrates the long-term influence of the major European powers in shaping economic expertise, not only through academic appointments but also through the institutional structures that emerged over time. Academic careers, institutional development, and policy work became closely intertwined, producing a complex landscape in which economic discourse was consolidated as an academic discipline and integrated into the machinery of government through institutions such as the Centre of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE).

The book also devotes attention to narratives that have often been overlooked. Psalidopoulos traces the development of heterodox economics, including Marxist discourses that lay outside the postwar apparatus of government but nevertheless exerted influence on public debate. A particularly valuable section examines the contribution of women economists, including Irini Zafiriou, Rena Christoula, Marina Goudi, Anna Koutsoyiannis, and Maria Negreponti-Delivani. Their contributions were significant in both academic and policy contexts. Zafiriou, for instance, completed her PhD at the London School of Economics in the 1930s under the supervision of Lionel Robbins and later Friedrich von Hayek, submitting in 1945 a thesis entitled “The Concept of Capital in Economic Theory.” Her work offered a critique of capital in neoclassical theory. As Psalidopoulos notes, “unfortunately, this thesis, which preceded in a certain sense what was to be called 25 years later ‘the Cambridge controversies in the theory of capital’, did not attract the attention it deserved” (p. 175). Zafiriou’s call for a return to historically grounded analysis of capital accumulation may also be seen as anticipating later developments in heterodox economic thought. This case usefully illustrates that Joseph Schumpeter’s celebrated History of Economic Thought “lumber room” remains far from exhausted, particularly when attention is directed to less well-known figures.

This is only one example of how the book opens new avenues of research in the Greek history of economic thought. As I am reading through it, a number of questions arise. For example, can we know more about the content of economically oriented modules taught from the nineteenth century to the present? What debates shaped academic curricula across institutions? What role did institutions such as the Centre of Planning and Economic Research play in transforming ideas into tangible government policy, and how did their role evolve over time? Some of these questions are addressed in recent research on postwar economic policy (Psalidopoulos Reference Psalidopoulos2025), while others remain open for further investigation.

However, it should be noted that the appeal of Psalidopoulos’s approach extends beyond those who are working specifically on modern Greek economic thought. In the introduction, Psalidopoulos outlines a complex methodological framework based on Craufurd Goodwin’s (Reference Goodwin1972) approach, which serves as the structure on which the book is based. His aim is to combine economic ideas, personalities, politics, and policy in explaining the national political economy and its evolution over time. He writes that “the present author sees in a historical reconstruction that applies economic thought to concrete country circumstances a bigger merit” and adds that the goal is “to reconstruct how they [the economists of each era] analyzed the economic problems of their epoch and how they led slowly and steadfastly to the formation of camps of schools of thought” (p. 4). This approach combines sociological inquiry with economic history and the history of economic thought, doing so in a forward-looking manner that does not forsake analytical clarity or the importance of context. It offers a welcome middle ground between purely sociological approaches to the history of economic thought and analytically driven accounts that eschew historical, institutional, or social context. At the same time, it provides a template for analyzing developments in economic thought as part of a state with defined borders and internal organizational, economic, and social structures. This perspective allows the transference of ideas and their implementation to be understood as part of both a state’s external relations and its internal politics, in relation to its perceived needs. Psalidopoulos writes, “The discussions about the right path for the Greek economy had their roots in a specific relationship between transmitters of economic theories in different European countries and Greek recipients, the latter facing national realities and adjusting their positions and enriching or changing economic paradigms” (p. 229). In this regard, the book offers new ways of conceptualizing the link between theoretical developments and their transmission in the history of economics. In sociological terms, it presents a kaleidoscopic view of the relationship between central economic powers and the periphery, as it applies to the Greek case.