The Historical Archives of the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP) serves as a documentation centre for researchers interested in the history of 20th-century Greek economy, providing an overall answer to the question of the country's development during this period. The material it holds includes archives of banks and organizations which, in addition to being important providers of funding for the development of Greece, were the implementing bodies of state economic policy in the post-war period, as well as business archives.
Through this material, an important part of the economic, agricultural, industrial, banking and social history of Greece in the 20th century is reconstructed. The main institutions and structures of the Greek economy, the country's agricultural and industrial policy over the decades, important aspects of the banking system, the rural settlement of landless refugees after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the exchanged populations, the agricultural cooperative movement, the foreign aid Greece received after WWII and its management are some of the research topics included in the Piraeus Bank Group's Historical Archives. Sectoral studies of key productive sectors and services, individual aspects of state economic policy, case studies of businesses, studies of local and regional development as well as environmental and local history and issues of labour history are also among the requests of expert researchers and the general public.
In more detail, the searches include, for example:
- economic reconstruction in post-war Greece,
- the study of the Greek banking system (evolution and diversification of banking operations and products, return/risk management, financial flows, capital accumulation, interest rate fluctuations, network development, restructuring/mergers, comparative study of institutions, etc.),
- the study of bank capital, options (e.g. lending policy, rural credit, clientelism, social policy/community benefit: distribution of foreign supplies, rehabilitation of earthquake victims and civil war victims, endowment of destitute girls) and related issues,
- the economic policy of the Greek state during the period of the economic and agricultural crisis (1929-1933),
- individual aspects of the state's economic policy and its effects on the formation of economic and social strata,
- rural income, agricultural credit and the agrarian family,
- sectoral studies on key productive sectors [agriculture (mechanization and optimization of cultivation methods, cultivation systems, irrigation and land reclamation, fertilizers and greenhouses, commercial crops, cooperatives), special crops (mastic, fisheries, forestry)], techniques (e.g. (e.g. marble carving) and services such as crafts, trade and industry ( metalworking, textiles-cotton, tobacco, olive oil, shipbuilding, agricultural industries), transport (networks, shipping), shipping and tourism,
- the development strategies pursued by the Greek State in terms of
specific sectors of production and size of enterprises,
- the issue of 'frozen credits' and capital management by enterprises in an unstable political and economic environment,
- issues of technological innovation,
- issues of entrepreneurship,
- ventures (e.g. automotive industry),
- the spatial distribution of industrial development in the country,
- business case studies (out of several hundred examples),
- issues related to the history of land ownership in Greek regions,
- local and regional development studies for the whole Greek territory,
- environmental history (rural and forest landscape management, water management/desalination, drainage/diversion,
major projects, zoning of industrial areas, etc.)
- local history (across the whole geographical range of the country),
- labour history issues,
- issues of collective representation,
- portraits of significant figures.