Voted up for trying to find evidence against my hypothesis, but this doesn’t seem to be what we’re after. It says these were mostly late 1980s and early 1990s, i.e. just before and after the fall of communism, not just before the pyramid schemes of 1997.
Also they’re mostly illegal immigrants, so presumably they couldn’t take their assets with them. Though maybe if you’d seen it coming you could have fled to greece with your life savings in dollar notes.
The current albanian immigrant population of greece is about 12,5% of the current population of albania. It’s also not clear that the numbers reflect illegal or legal immigration (I think the real numbers were much higher at their peak, perhaps more than 2x). Also consider that Italy was a more preferred destination. And then count in the rest of the world, to where albanian immigration got directed after the early 90s.
What it is safe to say is that many people did leave Albania when they were given a chance. Also, the crisis erupted in January of 1997, and I assume the ponzi scheme had been brewing for a few years before that.
In any case, this was a minor point, but I just happen to be aware of the extent of albanian immigration to greece for (obvious?) reasons.
I’d be interested to see the details. My suspicion is that the costs to leaving may have swamped the benefits for many people, and that the optimal move for a rational person under the circumstances would have been to hold on to assets and US$ and weather the storm, which would probably have been less bad than for those who lost their life savings, but still pretty bad.
Significant numbers of counterexamples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_immigrants_in_Greece
Voted up for trying to find evidence against my hypothesis, but this doesn’t seem to be what we’re after. It says these were mostly late 1980s and early 1990s, i.e. just before and after the fall of communism, not just before the pyramid schemes of 1997.
Also they’re mostly illegal immigrants, so presumably they couldn’t take their assets with them. Though maybe if you’d seen it coming you could have fled to greece with your life savings in dollar notes.
The current albanian immigrant population of greece is about 12,5% of the current population of albania. It’s also not clear that the numbers reflect illegal or legal immigration (I think the real numbers were much higher at their peak, perhaps more than 2x). Also consider that Italy was a more preferred destination. And then count in the rest of the world, to where albanian immigration got directed after the early 90s.
What it is safe to say is that many people did leave Albania when they were given a chance. Also, the crisis erupted in January of 1997, and I assume the ponzi scheme had been brewing for a few years before that.
In any case, this was a minor point, but I just happen to be aware of the extent of albanian immigration to greece for (obvious?) reasons.
I’d be interested to see the details. My suspicion is that the costs to leaving may have swamped the benefits for many people, and that the optimal move for a rational person under the circumstances would have been to hold on to assets and US$ and weather the storm, which would probably have been less bad than for those who lost their life savings, but still pretty bad.