Mirages and miracles of European small and medium enterprise development

A small‐scale industry ‘renaissance’ has characterized recent academic literature on industrialization and development policies. This comes as a reaction to the manifest difficulties facing mass production economies and to the sometimes spectacular performance of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly in Europe. The causes of the above success, together with the accompanying theorizations — such as the flexible specialization approach — are manifold and contradictory. Furthermore, theories on the present and future of SMEs vary as regards both optimism and policy implications — supra‐national, national or regional. Recent EU policies towards SMEs present an amalgam of instruments which, albeit often economically effective, constitute chiefly a political gesture.     

Greece—EU comparative economic performance at the national and regional levels: why divergence?

This paper reviews the evidence on the economic performance of the Greek economy vis‐à‐vis the average economic record in the European Union. It deals with the problems of measuring economic convergence and suggests that the Greek economy has followed a diverging path since 1980. It also addresses the problems of policies aiming at strengthening the regional economies, by means of examining the case of Crete and the latter's experience with the implementation of the Integrated Mediterranean Programme (IMP). It concludes by drawing attention to the fact that the absorption of funds alone does not guarantee a long‐term and viable development scenario, since the inertia of domestic actors (both at the national and the regional levels) and the inherited structures and attitudes may culminate in the preservation of the status quo rather than its transformation.