Anecdotes can’t tell you how an economy is doing: Greek vacation edition

Greece has endured a Depression-level collapse over the past few years, with employment and real national income both about 25 per cent below their pre-crisis peaks. As if that weren’t bad enough, capital controls, introduced in response to the Eurosystem’s refusal to act as a lender of last resort to Greek banks that had passed the ECB’s stress tests, have led to reports of shortages at grocery stores and gas stations.

Yet none of this was visible when we visited the country over the past few weeks, even in the large cities. The point isn’t that Greece is doing just fine — far from it. Rather, it’s an illustration of the dangers of relying on anecdotes and personal experience when evaluating an economy of many millions of people.