Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis

Born	(1961-03-24) 24 March 1961 Athens, Greece
Nationality	Greek/Australian
Institution	University of Texas – Austin University of Athens
Field	Microeconomics Game theory Experimental economics International economics Political economy

Yanis Varoufakis (Greek: Γιάνης Βαρουφάκης, born 24 March 1961) is a political economist and author of dual Greek-Australian nationality. He is an active participant in the current debates on the global and European crisis, the author of The Global Minotaur, a Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens and a private consultant for Valve Corporation.

Teacher

After training in mathematics and statistics, Varoufakis received his economics doctorate in 1987 at the University of Essex. Before that he had already began teaching economics and econometrics at the University of Essex and the University of East Anglia. In 1988 he spent a year as a Fellow at the University of Cambridge. From 1989 until 2000 he taught as Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Sydney. In 2000 he moved to his native Greece where he is still Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens (currently on leave). In 2002 Varoufakis established The University of Athens Doctoral Program in Economics (UADPhilEcon), which he directed until 2008. Since January 2013 he has been teaching at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Euro crisis, economic policy and The Modest Proposal

From January 2004 to December 2006 Varoufakis served as economic adviser to George Papandreou, whose government he was to become an ardent critic of a few years later. Author of several books on game theory, Varoufakis is also a recognised speaker and often appears as guest analyst for news media like the BBC, CNN, Sky News, Russia Today and Bloomberg TV among others. In November 2010 he and Stuart Holland, a former Labour Party MP and economics professor at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), published A Modest Proposal, a set of economic policies aimed at overcoming the Euro crisis.^[1] In 2013, Version 4.0 of "A Modest Proposal" appeared with James K. Galbraith, the American economist of note, as a third co-author. This version was published in late 2013 in French with a supporting foreword by Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France. Since September 2011, Truman Factor features select articles by Varoufakis in English and in Spanish. Varoufakis compares the role of the US economy since the 1970s in relation to the rest of the world with the minotaur.^[2]

The Globalizing Wall

In 2005/6 Varoufakis travelled extensively with artist Danae Stratou along seven dividing lines around the world (in Palestine, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Kosovo, Belfast, Cyprus, Kashmir and the US-Mexico border). Stratou produced the installation CUT: 7 dividing lines, while Varoufakis wrote texts that then became a political-economic account of these divisions, entitled The Globalising Wall. In 2010 Stratou and Varoufakis founded the project Vital Space.^[3]

Valve Corporation

Beginning in March 2012, Varoufakis became Economist-in-Residence at Valve Corporation, a major video game company, where he researched the digital economies that spontaneously take shape within the borderless communities of video game players. In June 2012, he began a blog about his research at Valve. As of February 2013, he now states that his function at Valve is as a private consultant.^[4][5][6][7]

Books in English

• Economic Indeterminacy: A personal encounter with the economists' most peculiar nemesis. London and New York: Routledge, 2013 (forthcoming)
• The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy. Zed Books, 2011 (translations in German, Greek, Italian and Spanish); second edition 2013
• Modern Political Economics: Making sense of the post-2008 world. London and New York: Routledge, 2011 (with Joseph Halevi and Nicholas Theocarakis)
• Game Theory: A critical text. London and New York: Routledge, 2004 (with Shaun Hargreaves-Heap)
• (ed.): Game Theory: Critical Perspectives. Volumes 1–5, London and New York: Routledge, 2001
• Foundations of Economics: A beginner's companion. London and New York: Routledge, 1998
• Game Theory: A critical introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1995 (with Shaun Hargreaves-Heap)
• Rational Conflict. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991
• (ed.): Conflict in Economics. Hemel Hempstead: Wheatsheaf and New York: St Martin's Press, 1990 (with David P. T. Young )

His next book currently has the working title Reverse Alchemy: Europe on the Road to Disintegration.

Selected interviews/reviews

• The New Priesthood: An Interview with Yanis Varoufakis conducted by Philip Pilkington at Naked Capitalism, March 1, 2012 (Part II, March 7, 2012)
• The Great Shock, review by Brian Collins in the Los Angeles Review of Books, October 17, 2011
• The Global Minotaur: An Interview with Yanis Varoufakis conducted by Philip Pilkington at Naked Capitalism, February 13, 2012
• Interviewed on CBC's Writers by Eleanor Wachtel
• "Varoufakis' mini documentary on the Euro Crisis for Channel 4, February 2012" produced and presented by Yanis Varoufakis, February 2012
• "" Interviewed by Christian Amanpour on CNN International of Europe's continued experiment with Austerity

References

External links

• Yanis Varoufakis' personal blog, where he analyses regularly the Global and European Crisis
• Valve Economics blog, where he posts analyses of the digital economies that emerge within video gamers' communities
• Roberts, Russ (February 25, 2013). "Varoufakis on Value, Spontaneous Order, and the European Crisis". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.