Greece's deputy finance minister on Monday said that international creditors had underestimated the impact of three years of austerity on the country's deep recession by using a faulty calculation.

Christos Staikouras said the actual fiscal multiplier, or negative effect, of austerity on growth is "around 1.0, not 0.5," the number used by inspectors from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to draft their fiscal policy recommendations.

US scholars Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for their work on the functioning of markets and how best to match supply and demand.

The work by Roth and Shapley helps match donors of human organs with patients in need of a transplant, or students with universities, or Internet search engines that auction out space for advertisers.

Japanese mobile carrier Softbank on Monday announced a monster deal to take control of U.S.-based Sprint Nextel for about $20 billion in the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Japanese firm.

Softbank said the ambitious takeover would see it acquire 70 percent of Sprint Nextel, the third-biggest U.S. mobile firm behind AT&T and Verizon Wireless, with the deal set for completion in the middle of next year.

Efforts to restore investor confidence in Greece's struggling economy took a double blow this week when a major European bottler and a prominent dairy company announced relocation plans.

Coca-Cola's second biggest bottler worldwide, Athens-based Coca-Cola Hellenic (CCHBC), on Thursday said it was moving its headquarters to Switzerland and looking to establish a listing on the London stock exchange.

Senior finance officials from Asia and Europe met Monday for talks on the global economy in the face of growing nervousness about the worldwide fallout of the eurozone debt crisis.

The meeting in Bangkok comes as Asia's economies -- for years seen as a bright spot in a gloomy world economy -- show increasing strains from Europe's financial turbulence.

Natural gas supplies from Iran to Turkey, interrupted by a pipeline blast for six days, have resumed, said an official statement Sunday cited by Anatolia news agency.

"The Iranian gas pipeline whose activity was interrupted following an explosion is again in operation," said the statement from Energy Minister Taner Yiliz.

Women could rescue Japan's chronically underperforming economy if more of them went to work, the female director of the International Monetary Fund said Saturday.

Christine Lagarde said Japan's shrinking and greying workforce, which has left the country struggling to pay welfare bills, could really benefit from an injection of female talent.

The world economy needs to balance austerity with growth if it is to recover fully from the global financial crisis, a key IMF committee said in Tokyo on Saturday.

"Fiscal policy should be appropriately calibrated to be as growth-friendly as possible," the International Monetary and Financial Committee said in a communique.

China said Saturday the failure by Washington and Tokyo to fix their fiscal problems was hurting the global economy, as it called for "bold, swift and decisive action" to reverse a slowdown.

Deputy central bank governor Yi Gang warned the absence of a "credible, medium-term fiscal consolidation in some of the major advanced economies such as the United States and Japan" is unsettling for the world economy.

The IMF and World Bank on Saturday raised the alarm on the "humanitarian emergency" in West Africa's Sahel region, where millions risk starvation amid regional insecurity, drought and poor harvests.

"We are troubled by the acute humanitarian emergency in the Sahel region where hunger threatens the lives of 19 million people and the stability of the region," said a statement from the organizations' joint development committee.