In the international field, despite a period of apparent euphoria after the First World War, the bases of the international economic system were particularly unstable. In Greece, the multiple cost of rebuilding both the state and the economy after the end of the ten-year period of war (1913-22) was heavy. The fall of the drachma at the beginning of the 1920s and the influx of foreign capital into the country, especially in the form of public and private loans, led to an increase in production. The first phase of this period was characterized by the raising of the public debt in an effort by the state to relieve and settle refugee populations.
The collapse of the world economic order post-1929 also marked a period of transition for the Greek economy which until now had been vulnerable and dependent. The impact of the world economic crisis was met with the expansion and increase of the forms of state interventionism. The various measures adopted gradually stabilized the Greek economy but without altering its fundamental characteristics. Both agricultural production and industrial development saw a dramatic increase in pace. It is worth noting that the increase in the rate of economic growth that Greece exhibited in the mid-1930s was falling short only of that of Japan and the Soviet Union.
The Regime of the Fourth of August continued the public finance policy of its predecessors. The new element this time was investing the economic practices of the dictatorship with its paternalistic rhetoric, which was, after all, an organic part of its ideological apparel.