鈥淧roblem with putting economists into politics is they tend to act on principle,鈥澛犅燩aul Mason, the Channel 4 News economics editor, on this morning鈥檚 news that Yanis Varoufakis had resigned as Greece鈥檚 finance minister.
Others, including the Greek government鈥檚 creditors, are less favourable in their judgement on Varoufakis, who took his PhD at the University of Essex and gave up a job at the University of Texas at Austin to become finance minister.
Varoufakis, who will feel Greece's referendum result vindicates his insistence that no bailout be agreed without debt relief, says on聽聽that he had been聽鈥渜uietly writing obscure academic texts for years, until thrust onto the public scene by Europe鈥檚 inane handling of an inevitable crisis鈥.
Alexis Tsipras, Greece鈥檚 prime minister, has opted to replace him with another academic economist, Euclid Tsakalotos, the former deputy foreign minister who has been a leading member of the Greek government negotiating team attempting to strike a deal with its creditors.
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Tsakalotos went to school at the private St Paul鈥檚 in London, studied politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford as an undergraduate, took a master鈥檚 at the University of Sussex, a PhD at Oxford, then worked as a lecturer at the University of Kent in the early 1990s. He was latterly a professor of economics at National and Kapidistrian University of Athens.
Tsakalotos鈥 credentials are already under question after it emerged that he wrote a 2010 paper on the Greek crisis聽.
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Mason, an experienced Greece watcher, has described Tsakalotos as a who is committed to Euro membership.
Before Varoufakis got the push, the EU appears to have started blaming his academic specialism in game theory for his negotiating tactics.
Varoufakis had calculated that the EU would never allow Greece to exit from the euro and thus the Greek government鈥檚 negotiations prior to Sunday鈥檚 referendum were 鈥渇ake鈥, according to this version of events. 鈥淭hings happened too fast for game theorist [Varoufakis] to adapt, and not only is he destroying his economy, but has made a huge tactical mistake,鈥澛.
The EU, the IMF and the ECB have no doubt scrutinised Tsakalotos鈥 academic papers already.
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