Chapter 1: Determinants of and Obstacles to Economic Growth in Contemporary Greece

This new book aims to foster an in-depth understanding of critical factors to Greece's economic growth. It will be a valuable guide to both those willing to identify the key factors to be considered for (modeling) sustainable economic growth and those interested in exploring the Greek economy's dynamics and performance. The objectives are to reveal these factors and discuss their importance in the current play: Greece's economic development after the great economic crisis and the COVID-19 crisis.

The list of factors affecting economic growth in empirical research is extensive. Macroeconomic and external environment factors, governance and institutions indices, geographic indicators, and fixed factors (such as participation in conflicts) expand the list of traditional determinants of the augmented Solow model (Moral-Benito, 2012). The list may develop further by considering, for example, the findings of the literature linking entrepreneurship with economic growth, regarding the importance of both formal and informal institutional factors in shaping entrepreneurial activity and affecting through it the level of economic growth (Urbano, Aparicio, & Audretsch, 2019). Another example is social policy's role in enhancing social cohesion, which encourages capital accumulation and technological progress and can contribute to productive development (Chang, 2004).