Author: Dimitris Kontogiannis
Lucas Papademos, the soft-spoken governor of the Bank of Greece and a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, has emerged as a surprise candidate to succeed Christian Noyer as ECB vice-president on June 1.
Papademos, who was one of the main architects of Greece's entry into the eurozone in 2001, would have never imagined this in 1985, when he returned to Greece from the US to become economic adviser to the governor of the Bank of Greece. It was the same year that his PhD dissertation supervisor at MIT, professor Franco Modigliani, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Robert Solow and Stanley Fischer were the other two members of his dissertation committee.
Papademos says that he is neither a Keynesian nor a monetarist, preferring to call himself an eclectic, adding that "the effectiveness of economic and monetary policy depends on a host of factors, including the prevailing economic conditions and institutional structures".
He says: "Modigliani is a brilliant economist and a friend who has certainly influenced my analytical approach to economic policy. We collaborated closely over a long period but sometimes we agreed to disagree.