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Global Value Chains and Upgrading – Experiences of Hungarian Firms in the Machinery Industry
5-22Views:551Global production networks and global value chains have become widespread today. In these cases firms locate the various stages of their value adding activities across different countries. The activities of global value chains form a new phase of globalization characterized by fragmented production, transfer of technology, and decreasing transport costs (Kaplinsky 2013). Developing countries are involved in these production networks, perceiving this as an important (if not the only) way to develop. The Central European countries have taken an active part in the chains of multinational firms since the nineties. The benefit derived from this participation varies across sectors and firms. In this article we analyze the experiences of Hungarian companies in the machinery industry. The structure of the article is the following. After a description of the basic research question and methodology, a literature review is provided. In the following section we introduce the companies surveyed and review their product-, process- and functional upgrading experiences. Finally, we discuss our findings and suggest some managerial and policy implications.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: F23, M21
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The Determinants of Wine Prices: A Systematic Literature Review
84-101Views:688Wine is a highly differentiated product sold at a wide range of different prices. This article aims to provide a systematic review of the literature written on the determinants of wine prices globally. The article runs a search on the combination of keywords “wine”, “price”, “determinant” in the Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR, ProQuest, and Science Direct databases. Based on a final set of 46 articles written between 1998 and 2018, results suggest that terroir and quality ratings are the most significant determinants of wine prices, while objective quality and label data also determines wine prices, though to a different extent and with a different sign in some cases. The hedonic pricing method was the most common way of analyzing the relationship between wines prices and their determinants, and results are similar for most regions and varieties. We believe that our results can be useful for researchers, stakeholders, and even for decision-makers in better understanding the factors lying behind wine prices.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: D12, D40 Q11
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The economic impacts of direct payments on agricultural income – A Literature Review
3-25Views:953The economic impacts of direct payments is a widely studied field in the literature related to the Common Agricultural Policy. This article aims to provide a systematic review of the income-related impacts of direct payments. In doing so, the article screened the academic literature on the impacts of direct payments and identified 150 relevant ones, out of which 41 were written directly on income-related effects.
Relevant articles can be classified into four groups: general, distributional, stabilisation and other impacts. Most of the literature criticised the ongoing system of direct payments and their effectiveness in producing income-related policy goals. We believe that our results can be useful for researchers and policymakers in better understanding the income-related impacts of direct payments.Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: Q18
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A Review of Hungarian Research Antecedents and the Assessment of Fair Trade in Hungary
54-68Views:748Fair trade is a civil initiative aiming to provide fair conditions to the poor producers of the Third World and enable them to follow a sustainable model of development. This realigned commercial partnership is to modify the rules of traditional international trade between the producers of the southern nations and purchasers of the northern hemisphere and replace them with a novel alternative. Fair trade has unified techniques of labeling and a well-established institutional system in order to change the rules of the game that have controlled the dominant economic model. The main tool of the movement is the engagement of conscious and socially responsible consumers towards the topic. This review summarizes the Hungarian reports and studies done about the issue so far and introduces the present circumstances in Hungary.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) code: F13, F18, J81, P45
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Quality in education
149-182Views:446The aim of this paper is to study the basic questions of the quality of education from the perspective of the economics of education. In the introduction we review the fundamental concepts of quality; then we analyze the quality level of hungarian education through the results reported in international comparative studies such as PISA and IALS. We try to find the reasons for the weak performance of domestic education in these studies. After this we review the quality rating and other quality indicators of educational institutes, which are widely available to the public. And finally we try to discover the employers' quality requirements of the higher education system through an empirical study.
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A review of the border effect literature – is domestic trade really biased?
81-102Views:328The aim of this article is to give a comprehensive review of the border effect literature. The author demonstrates through a number of empirical results that state borders still obstruct commodity trade flows between countries significantly, even in the twenty first century’s globalized world market. Countries’ trade patterns show a massive bias toward domestic markets, which can be only partially justified by formal factors such as income differences, distances, tariffs, cultural or linguistic dissimilarities and different currencies. Controlling for all these factors does not abolish the hindering role of borders, which suggests that the preference for domestic partners is excessive. The paper analyses major gravity model specifications and estimation methods in order to shed light on solving the border puzzle.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kódok: F14, F15
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Choice of an Exchange Rate Regime: the Role of Optimum Currency Area Theory
21-40Views:232This lecture deals with the problem of the choice of exchange rate regime for fiat and fully convertible currencies. We begin with a review of different types of exchange rate regimes and discuss the difference between de jure and de facto regimes. We also briefly talk about how classification of exchange rate regimes leads to different interpretations of the relationship between regime and macroeconomic performance. Afterwards we give a short discussion of the vanishing intermediate exchange rate regime hypothesis. In the second part of the lecture we mention five different approaches to the choice of the optimal exchange rate regime and provide a general overview of the literature on optimum currency areas. -
HR Funtion Under Changes at Subsidiaries of Foreign Multinational Firms in Light of an Empirical Study in Hungary
98-116Views:785Following almost two decades of multinational companies (MNCs) operating in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) expatriate and local managers continue to ask the following question: “How can we effectively manage the available human resources from our subsidiaries or assignees from the corporate centre?” A model of human resource (HR) practices in the subsidiary units of MNC’s in Hungary was developed from a review of the literature, extensive professional experience in the region and an interview-based survey at 42 subsidiaries of large multinational companies. This model describes the evolution of different HR variables in the light of external (macro) and internal (firm specific) factors.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: M16, M51, M52 és M54
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The Marketing Concept, Market Orientation and Marketing Competencies: How are they Adopted in Small and Medium-sized Firms?
104-117Views:248The aim of this paper is to review the literature dealing with the marketing concept, its implementation, i.e., market orientation, marketing competencies and their effects on performance with special emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). A large number of studies have shown that, on the one hand, the lack of a conceptual marketing approach is one of the most serious problems owner-managers face in business operations and, on the other hand, marketing is recognised as one of the most important business activities essential to the survival and growth of the enterprise. According to the literature,
the adoption of the marketing concept/market orientation in SME-s is limited, due to limited resources in finance, time and marketing competencies.JEL classification: L26, M14, M31
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Examination of the effect of financial transfers within the European Union
83-102Views:416It is a common view that financial transfers within the European Union have a significant effect on economic growth. Model simulations, sponsored by the European Commission, seem to confirm this supposition. The econometric analyses evaluating the actual impact of the funds, however, yields a dismal picture on the additional growth and convergence effects of financial transfers. This study's goal is to find the reason why the outcomes differ so much. First, we present the main types and the underlying logic of the evaluation methods of EU regional policy. This is followed by a review of the lessons learnt from the specific evaluation methodologies including case-studies, general equilibrium models, and regression analyses. Our conclusion is that the main objectives of the European regional policy prevailed only to a limited extent, which is mainly due to crowding out effects, rent-seeking, inefficient allocation and moral hazard.
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From mud-hut to microprocessors: The unified growth theory
29-50Views:262The Unified Growth Theory attempts to explain economic growth in the long run within a single framework. Accordingly, it is expected that a successful unified theory is capable of modeling the transition among different economic regimes. In this study, after identifying the main features of the three growth regimes (Mathusian, post-Malthusian and sustained economic growth), we review two typical unified growth theories. While the Hansen-Prescott model seeks to explain how the transition occurred, the Galor-Weil model focuses on the causes and interrelatedness of the observed phenomena.
JEL classification: N10, O41