Read more: 鈥�Greece in crisis: Saving a nation鈥�
One of the big questions hanging over the Greek crisis is whether it should exit the eurozone, an expensive solution dubbed 鈥淕rexit鈥�. In theory this would see Greece reinstating its old currency, the drachma, to attract investment and restore prosperity. But would it stop the crisis spreading to other eurozone nations like Spain and Portugal?
Scientists who apply the laws of natural networks such as ecosystems to economic networks suspect not. The primary problem, they say, is the way the eurozone is built. Grexit will not change that.
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鈥淭he euro might be the worst possible way to engineer a [stable] system,鈥� says George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a network theorist and former investments director at Deutsche Bank. The common currency increased members鈥� interdependence, he says, yet each can still respond independently to their own economic situation.
When this happens in nature, entire networks are exposed to risk by wayward members, says Sugihara, and extinctions or collapse can follow. There are three options for economic networks to avoid this fate: cut interdependence, increase regulation or lose members.
At first glance, that suggests Grexit could help. 鈥淔rom a network perspective it makes sense to isolate a unit that is about to fall,鈥� says Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who studies radical change in networks. But, he adds, that won鈥檛 help in the real world: all European nations are connected through loans whether Greece uses the euro or not.
鈥淧roblems arise when parts of the system are independent in some ways and not in others,鈥� says Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Particularly bad is sharing risk without sharing defences. Eurozone countries borrow money separately by issuing national bonds. As a result, Greece鈥檚 national debt made it vulnerable to 鈥減redatory鈥� traders, who drove down the value of Greek bonds, triggering the current crisis.
If bonds were instead issued by the eurozone as a whole, they would be backed by strong economies like Germany 鈥� making weaker ones less vulnerable. But that would require more economic integration than the European Union has yet dared.
As it is, even if the eurozone cuts Greece off, Bar-Yam thinks predatory traders will simply hit the next-weakest economy, putting Spain and Portugal in the firing line.
More broadly, networks like the eurozone, where members both compete and cooperate, are vulnerable, says of the Do帽ana Biological Station in Seville, Spain. His observations of such networks in both the financial and natural worlds have identified ways in which the number of members a network can support drops.
By analysing the eurozone we could find the right balance of competition and cooperation that could support all the existing members, says Bascompte. 鈥淣ature is an example to learn from.鈥�
, former Belgian prime minister and Liberal leader in the European Parliament, agrees. 鈥淣either Greece, nor Portugal, nor Spain are creating the crisis in the eurozone,鈥� he says. Like the theorists, he wants system solutions: more closely coordinated economic strategies and eurobonds.