Rania Antonopoulos

Rania Antonopoulos
Ράνια Αντωνοπούλου
Rania Antonopoulos at a 2013 lecture at Columbia University
Alternate Minister for Combatting Unemployment
Incumbent
Assumed office 27 January 2015
Prime Minister	Alexis Tsipras
Personal details
Born	(1960-12-17) December 17, 1960 Athens, Greece
Political party	Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza)
Spouse(s)	Dimitri B. Papadimitriou
Alma mater	New School for Social Research
Profession	Economist

Rania Antonopoulos, born Ourania Antonopoulou (Greek: Ουρανία Αντωνοπούλου) on 17 December 1960 in Athens, is a Greek heterodox economist and Syriza politician. Since the January 2015 election, she has been the Greek Alternate Minister for Combatting Unemployment. Between February and August 2015, she also was a member of the Hellenic Parliament.

A former adviser and consultant for UN Women, UNDP and the ILO, she is specialized in macroeconomic gender issues and unemployment. She is Associate Professor of Economics at New York Bard College and a senior scholar of the Levy Economics Institute where she is involved with the Modern Monetary Theory school of post-Keynesian economics.

A co-initiator of the Economists for Full Employment project, she has been a long-time supporter of a job guarantee with the state being employer of last resort. Following a successful 2011 pilot project, she has been appointed Alternate Minister for Combatting Unemployment in the Syriza-led Tsipras Government. In her ministerial office, she is specifically tasked with implementing a nationwide program to combat long-term unemployment by creating at least 300,000 new jobs for the unemployed.

Education and early career

When in 1997 Antonopoulos received her Ph.D. economics from the New School for Social Research, she had already been teaching economics at New York University and in the same year was awarded the university's Teaching Excellence Award. New York University appointed her Associate Professor of Economics, a post she would hold until 2006.

Working in the fields of feminist economics, international trade, and the economics of globalization, Antonopoulos served as macroeconomic policy adviser for UN Women, and as advising consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Office (ILO). In 2002, she became co-director of the Knowledge Networking Program on Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics (GEM-IWG) and co-founded GEM-Europe and GEM-Turkey.

Academic career

Currently Antonopoulos is Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College she has been affiliated with since 2001. She is also a senior scholar with the associated Levy Economics Institute and director of the Gender Equality and the Economy program. In the last years she has further specialized in linkages of gender and macro economics, in the macroeconomic impact of job guarantee policies, and in the implications of unpaid work on poverty indicators.

In line with the heterodox post-Keynesian framework of Modern Monetary Theory, her concept of a "Job guarantee" which she has been developing at Bard College since 2006 turns the state into an Employer of last resort that issues publicly funded jobs at minimum wage level to everybody unable to find a job in the private sector. The huge rise of unemployment following the Greek government-debt crisis and the austerity measures imposed by the Troika led the PASOK-led Ministry of Labour into giving the concept a chance. In 2012, a first pilot program was rolled out for 55,000 unemployed.

Minister for Combatting Unemployment

When in the January 2015 elections, Antonopoulos was elected a Member of the Hellenic Parliament on Syriza's state list, new Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras appointed her Alternate Minister for Combatting Unemployment. Antonopoulou is the second Modern Monetary Theory scholar to assume a high profile post in a government, following her former colleague at Bard College, Stephanie Kelton, who earlier in January was appointed Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.

In her ministerial office, Antonopoulos is specifically tasked with implementing a nationwide "Job guarantee" program to combat long-term unemployment, creating at least 300,000 new jobs for the unemployed. The program has been described both by herself and by others as being a centerpiece of a "Greek New Deal" as proposed by the Syriza government.

Outlined in a Levy Institute policy paper from October 2014, the program will be built on the experience of the 2012 pilot project and won't be restricted to reskilling some of the unemployed for the private sector. The program, with precedents only in the Indian Rural Employment Guarantee, is rather set to create publicly funded long-term jobs to allow the unemployed fulfilling socially needed tasks at a minimum wage level. In a February 2015 interview with Deutsche Welle, Antonopoulos pointed out that "the main problem in Greece is lack of aggregate demand and consequent lack of jobs, not lack of skills." Results of the 2012 pilot project suggested that some 500,000 of the totaling 1.3 million unemployed in Greece would be willing to take up such a minimum-wage level job.

Private life

Antonopoulos lives in Athens and New York and is married to her colleague at Bard College, Greek American economist Dimitri B. Papadimitriou.

External links

• CV and office terms of Rania Antonopoulos at the Hellenic Parliament (English)
• Profile of Rania Antonopoulos at Levy Economics Institute
• Profile and papers at RePEc
• Responding to the Unemployment Crisis in Greece, lecture held on 25 November 2013 at Columbia University.
• Employment Guarantee Policies: Contributing to Pro-Poor Development, Promoting Gender Equality, webcast by Rania Antonopoulos: full webcast (.wrf format, slides, audio stream)