Paraskevopoulos Ioannis was an economist, politician and a professor in the University of Athens. He was the Prime Minister of Greece from 1963 to 1964 and from 1966 to 1967. He was born in Lavda, now called Theisoa of Olympia, in 1898. He finished Andritsaina’s High School and he served in Asia Minor. He studied Economics and Law at the universities of Munich, Leipzig and later in London.
He taught at the universities of London and Freiburg, he was also a professor at the School of Higher Commercial Studies, an assistant professor at the University of Athens in the field of Political Economy and a regular professor at Panteion University. He was appointed as deputy governor of the National Bank and he also participated in the government of Petros Voulgaris first as a minister of Supply and later as a minister of National Economy. From 1952 until December 1964, when he was given the mandate to form a provisional government from king Konstantinos II, he took over different ministries. On December 22, 1966 in accordance with G. Papandreou and P. Kanellopoulos, he was given a mandate to form a transitional government that collapsed on April 3, 1967 since it didn’t win the Parliament’s vote of confidence.
After this event he withdrew from the political scene of the country. He died in 1984. However, he bequeathed a series of important works concerning the science of Economics and operation of banks.