Comparative Results of Southern European Economic Policies

Abstract

Specialists in the field do not necessarily all use the same criteria for measuring the success of the adjustment process. Nelson and colleagues (Nelson, 1990a) consider the latter to be successful when the government has managed to adopt and apply a coherent set of SMs and SCMs of a period of several years. The content of the preceding three chapters and Tables 2, 6 and 7 reveal that as regards this criterion, economic adjustment has been a failure in Greece and a relative success in Spain and Portugal. Other authors, notably Haggard and Kaufman (1992) and Haggard and Webb (1994a) justifiably consider that the evaluation of the degree of success of the adjustment process must also take into account the attainment of the specific economic objectives targeted by the SMs and the SCMs. It should be remembered in this regard that the goal of the SMs is to offset, even eliminate, macro-economic imbalances, whereas that of the SCMs is to liberalize the laws and institutions which govern the functioning of the economic system, in order to increase its openness and competitiveness.