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• Data mining through a business window (Part II.)

  108-130

  Attila Harmati

  Views:

  154

  This article demonstrates the real world applications of the technology of data mining by way of a data mining project. This project was created by the author and the analyzed database was provided by a real company. The aim of the analysis was to create a classification model for this firm. To achieve this we applied logistic regression models, a decision tree and a neural network. The best model can help the company to consciously establish which customers will probably respond positively to a personal letter in a direct marketing campaign. In this way potentially favourable customers are reached more efficiently than in the case of randomized selection. This increases the efficiency of the company, and the generalization of results can confirm several advantages of data mining as used in business life.

  JEL classification: C25, C44, C45, C49, C88

• The Development of Growth Accounting Techniques in the Mirror of Economic Growth

  85-103

  Levente Nadasi

  Views:

  160

  In this article we present the development of certain growth theories that model the main sources of growth. Since the elasticity of substitution – one of the most important parameters of production function – is not unity, as the Cobb-Douglas production function assumes, it can be different from a value of 1; hence we need a more general CES-type (Constant Elasticity of Substitution) production function. Another important question is the classification of factors of production. The elasticity of substitution is an efficiency factor as well, thus it receives special attention in the analysis. Finally we summarize the main papers that are mainly concerned with growth accounting, and try to answer the question of which factors play a significant or less significant role in economic growth. Growth accounting is strongly connected to growth theories so we refer back to growth theory at certain points.

  JEL classification: E13, O47

• Adatbányászat üzleti szemmel (I. rész)

  Attila Harmati

  Views:

  109

  Organizations in the 21st century - whether they are profitoriented or not, in private ownership or state-owned - can increase their efficiency with an outstanding tool. This tool is data mining. This article first of all defines and presents data mining, and locates it in the process of 'Knowledge Discovery in Databases'. Following this we review the fields of employment of data mining and the basic methods employed. In particular we discuss the method of classification and the theoretical background of the main techniques, such as decision trees, neural networks and logistic regression models. The second part of this paper presents the real world application of this technology by way of an analysis of a real database.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: C25, C44, C45, C49

• Revealed comparative advantage in Hungarian agriculture: a chaotic or coherent pattern?

  59-82

  Imre Ferto

  Views:

  140

  We describe the evolving pattern of Hungarian agri-food trade using recently developed empirical procedures based around the classic Balassa Index at various aggregation level and different bechmark between 1992 and 2002. Our results shows a significant geographical differences and across sub-sectors of 1, 2, and 3 digit SITC classification. The extent of trade specialisation exhibits a declining trend for all benchmarks; Hungary has lost comparative advantage for a number of product groups over time. The indices of specialisation have also tended to converge. For particular product groups, the indices display greater variation. They are stable for product groups with comparative disadvantage, but product groups with weak to strong comparative advantage show significant variation.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: Q12

• Study the past as if you would define the future!? - Testing the effectiveness of technical analysis on the Budapest Stock Exchange

  201-214

  Adam Farago

  Views:

  173

  Technical analysis is an attempt to forecast prices of a financial asset by the study of its past prices. This technique has been an element of financial practice for many decades, but it has not recieved general acceptance in academic literature. In this paper I analyze the effectiveness of certain technical trading rules on the Budapest Stoch Exchange between 1999 and 2005. In the first step I test if there are trading rules that can be qualified as effective when the analysis is applited to the full seven-year period. Some worries arise concerning the long-term analysis, so in the next step I test whether the effectiveness of the trading rules change if the analysis is applied to one-year sub-periods. The results indicate that it is worth implementing the short-term analysis because it shows a different picture of the effectiveness of the trading rules. However, the results of the short-term analysis show that if these trading rules are tested on one-year sub-periods, it becomes doubtful that they are effective.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: G14, G15

• Protecting the Architectural Heritage and Economic Strategy

  18-28

  Laszlo Csaba

  Views:

  145

  This essay advances five theses explaining the desolate state of the architectural heritage in Hungary. It also addresses the issue of why two decades of transition was not sufficient to remedy the shortcomings of four decades of socialism. In the second part of the study we attempt to draft a strategy that could help overcome these difficulties. It aims at a combination of business, municipal and civil society activities guided by a nationally coordinated plan. Following these guidelines the architectural heritage in Hungary could be transformed into an asset instead of a liability, as has been the case in many other European countries.

  JEL classification: I38, O21, P20, R11 

• Strategic market entry barriers in Hungary

  91-107

  Adam Torok

  Zsuzsa Deli-Gray

  Views:

  217

  This study is a continuation of a former project of the same research team. The focus of the research is market entry in Hungary for foreign firms, along with strategic entry barriers to both domestic and foreign importers to Hungary. A comparison of our findings from 2003 and 2008 gives some insights into the integration of the Hungarian domestic market into the Single European Market. Practical advice is offered to Hungarian market players on the scope of strategic entry barriers in Hungary as well as the ways entrepreneurs assess them.

  JEL classification: F13, F14, F15

• Features of Knowledge Intensive Business Services from Innovation Aspects

  147-156

  Sandor Nagy

  Views:

  158

  Based on the innovation approach to services this paper defines knowledge intensive business services and gives an overview of their features from innovation perspectives. It finds that different service activities are related to innovation systems to varying extents. Compared to other sectors, services lack stimulative institutional and other formal support systems that may act not only as knowledge centres for companies but could also contribute to both the protection and spread of innovation. In contrast with production, the absence of an efficient protection of intellectual property indicates a significant risk in the service sector, and hinders optimal knowledge transfer and results in waste and duplication in innovation efforts.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Classification: O31, O32, L84

• Price transmission on the Hungarian pork meat market in the presence of structural breaks

  24-36

  Zoltan Bakucs L.

  Views:

  112

  The study of marketing margins and price transmission on various commodity markets has been a popular research topic of the past decades (see MEYER, VON CRAMON-TAUBADEL, 2004, for a present survey). However with a few exceptions these studies focused on developed economies. This paper examines the above phenomena on the Hungarian pork market. The Johansen (maximum likelihood, 1988) or Engle and Granger (two step, 1987) cointegration tests do not reject the no-cointegration null hypothesis between the Hungarian pork producer and retail price series. Therefore, we applied the Gregory and Hansen (1996) procedure with recursively estimated breakpoints and ADF statistics, and found that the prices are cointegrated with a structural break occurring in April 1996. Exogeneity tests reveal the causality running from producer to retail prices both in the long and short run. Homogeneity tests are rejected, suggesting mark-up pricing strategy. Price transmission modelling suggests that price transmission on the Hungarian pork meat market is symmetric in the long, but asymmetric in the short-run, i.e. processors, wholesalers or retailers might take temporary advantage, should price changes occur.

  Journal of Econmic Literature (JEL) classification: Q13, D12, D4

• The Marketing Concept, Market Orientation and Marketing Competencies: How are they Adopted in Small and Medium-sized Firms?

  104-117

  Eniko Kontor

  Views:

  135

  The 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

• Knowledge Export in Higher Education: A Hierarchic Approach

  35-48

  Jozsef Beracs

  Views:

  153

  The role of higher education in economic growth is increasing parallel with the development of the knowledge industry. The export income from student mobility estimated by some experts exceeds 40 billion US dollars worldwide. In this paper we discuss two aspects of the phenomenon. First, higher education as an industry is more complex than simply student mobility. This is true despite the fact that this mobility is the most visible and most attractive part of the export activity. There are research outputs of universities and other service activities which are classified as exports and which are offered in market based systems. Second, the individual professors - whether employees of universities or freelance knowledge workers - university departments, faculties, universities, countries, regions, etc. could serve as the subjects of the statistical measurement of activities. All of those activities which are carried out by universities can be measured in different hierarchical systems.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: F14, M31

• Efficiency and resource allocation: the Hungarian managed health care system

  Gyorgy Jona

  Views:

  118

  The managed health care system (MHCS) was introduced and applied in Hungary between 1999 and 2009. The gradually expanding system covered only 22% of the population and included exclusively the curative-preventive health care, subsidy on medicaments, subsidy on therapeutic appliances and the spa service. Like anywhere else it was cost-effectiveness that was expected from the MHCS without the adverse effect in the quality of the health service. To decide whether the MHCS was successful in Hungary or not, we compare it with the results of those segments of the health system where the MHCS was not introduced. We use the method of the incremental cost analysis. We are making our comparison exclusively on the basis of health economics aspects, because no difference has evolved in the quality of the medical attendances. We will see that where the MHCS was applied, the medical attendance became cheaper, at those places where the MHCS was not applied the medical attendance became more expensive, causing a chronic financial deficit (137785 million HUF). Although the MHCS managed from less money, it gained 17767 million HUF during the mentioned ten years. We are going to present the general features of the MHCS and support the fact that the outcome of the managed care concept was rationalized and the savings in several segments of health care, by means of empirical evidence.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: I150, I180, G220, G320, H520.

• From mud-hut to microprocessors: The unified growth theory

  29-50

  Peter Foldvari

  Views:

  127

  The 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

• University Ranking Lists and Mirror Images - as Prospective Students Make Their Choice

  78-91

  Gyongyi Csuka

  Mihaly Szivos

  Views:

  145

  The paper is based on a survey carried out by the authors, which aimed, on the one hand, at specifying the extent to which would-be students know the rankings of universities and take them into consideration when choosing university faculties, and, on the other hand, at revealing the role played by other factors in their decisions. The majority of would-be students know the rankings of universities but these have not became an important factor in the decision processes. To have good lecturers and professors, to acquire useful knowledge, and to obtain a job with their degree are considered by would-be students as crucial factors. They try to get information from several sources and the Internet has become the most important one, which they use routinely and with skill. On the other hand, it can be proved that they would like to rely on more customized information sources as well.

  JEL classification: Z13

• Presentation of economic and socio-cultural impact analyses of the Opera festival of Miskolc

  114-130

  Viktoria Kundi

  Views:

  118

  The article presents research into the economic and socio-cultural impact of the Miskolc Opera festival. It explores how a cultural event – which was created thanks to conscious urban development – can operate in a city with an industrial past and a stagnant economic situation. After the methodology and desk research, the tourist facilities of the city are analyzed. In the following sections of the paper, the results of primary research are presented.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: Z130

• Több hitel, nagyobb kockázat

  185-200

  Balazs Csonto

  Dora Siklos

  Views:

  168

  The main goal of this paper is to analyse the characteristics of the rapid credit growth in Hungary in recent years. The availability of credit is crucial for households who want to smooth their consumption and for firms, while the amount of credit affects the monetary transmission mechanism and financial stability risks. We analyse the reasons for the credit expansion and demonstrate that the increase in the amount of credit can improve the efficiency of the monetary transmission mechanism, We analyse the micro risks induced by credit growth. Finally we demonstrate Krugman's model (1999) in connection with the Asian crises and then we try to prove that the growth of foregin-currency denominated credit decreases the ability of monetary policy to affect aggregate demand.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: E51.

• The “Timeless and Highly Topical at the Same Time”: In Memory of Professor András Bródy

  5-17

  Zsuzsa Bekker

  Views:

  143

  Professor András (Andrew) Bródy, one of the most outstanding of post-war Hungarian economists, perhaps the most spirited member of his generation, died at the age of 86, on 3rd of December, 2010. For several decades he had been dealing with the mathematical formulation of Marxian theory. He was an internationally respected model-builder, applying input-output analysis, also working with Professor Leontief in this field. He was both in full command of high-level theoretical knowledge, and proficient in the latest methodological approaches. He also conducted pioneering research into the application of
  the laws of thermodynamics to economic problems. His international fame was initially based on his book Prices and Proportions, published in Hungarian (1969) and also in English by North-Holland (1970). Several articles, conference papers, and several other books he wrote or edited broadened this recognition,
  the most important landmarks being Ciklus és szabályozás (Cycles and Regulation, 1980) in Hungarian, Slowdown (1982) in both English and Hungarian, and finally, Near Equilibrium in English (2004) and Chinese (2009). Fortunately, he participated in the work of our department, the History of Economic Thought at the Corvinus University of Budapest between 1995 and 2005. This article in his honour is a brief summary of his achievements and a reader’s selection of his writings prepared for the students of our department which reflect his views on the state of economic theories; also attached is a bibliography of his most important publications.

  JEL classification: A11, B23, B24, B32

• The impact of digitalization on the financial sector

  29-42

  Cserne Panka Póta

  Patrícia Becsky-Nagy

  Views:

  534

  Present-day consumer society increasingly satisfies its needs through digital channels, and financial products and services are no exceptions. The 4th industrial revolution is not only about the penetration of technology, but also the paradigm shift of business processes. The traditional members of the financial sector must adapt to the digitalized world to keep their positions in the market. The penetration of BigTech and FinTech companies influenced the expectations of consumers: customer experience became the main criteria of their decisions. In order to simplify and accelerate processes, banks use the methods of digitalization, and automatize the system to increase client satisfaction. In this article, we will introduce the three
  bank types based primarily on the usage of innovative technology, the extension and depth of the cooperation with FinTech companies, and the status of a bank’s internal digital transformation. Also, we will introduce the current status of the banking sector evidenced by our SWOT-analysis and mention some of the existing payment solutions.
  JEL Classification: G21, G23

• The question of duality in post-transition economic development

  71-90

  Miklos Szanyi

  Views:

  199

  One of the main questions of the FDI-based economic development model is how the local embeddedness of technologically advanced, globally operating multinational firms can be increased. The global economic integration of smaller, locally owned firms could be enhanced by the stimulating spillover effects stemming from multinationals. However, if the two main sectors of the economy function in isolation from each-other, stimulation effects cannot appear. This paper studies the features and extent of structural duality in Hungary, and the preconditions for deepening economic ties between the two sectors and
  of the utilization of positive externalities stemming from the presence of large multinational firms.

  JEL classification: F23, L53

• Interdependence between government redistribution and economic growth in the long run

  132-146

  Levente Nadasi

  Views:

  174

  The present paper aims to study changes in the degree of government redistribution with an institutional, historical, statistical and model-like approach. I investigate the impact of changes in redistribution on long-term economic growth in 30 European countries. It is generally stated that government spending/GDP ratio has been continuously increasing (in terms of trend) in Europe since the 1870s. I examine how the size of the states affects economic growth, and what other factors influence the long-run relationship between these two variables. My hypothesis is that in developed countries with high government
  redistribution it has been an impediment to economic growth in the long run. Finally, I illustrate this hypothesis with a statistical analysis of 30 European countries.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Classification: E66, H62, C10

• Az európai növekedési potenciál eróziója

  5-23

  Peter Halmai

  Views:

  108

  The potential growth rate in the EU Member States has been declining and lagging behind their competitors since the 1990's. Due to severe productivity problems in the EU (first of all the significant decrease in the total factor productivity dynamics) and the insufficient adaptation to the processes of globalisation, further remarkable and permanent decline in the potential growth rate is expected. Paradoxically the potential growth rate might decrease in the long run to a greater extent in the new Member States. As a result of the present global economic crisis new risks might appear. The riskss of the recurrence of shocks are significant. These factors project further erosion of the European growth potential. Integrated structural reforms and a comprehensive review of the European model are needed in order to overcome the unfavourable trends and put Europe on a more favourable growth path than the one indicated in this study.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: F15, F43

• HR Funtion Under Changes at Subsidiaries of Foreign Multinational Firms in Light of an Empirical Study in Hungary

  98-116

  Jozsef Poor

  Views:

  479

  Following 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

• A munkaerő-piaci intézmények hatásai a foglalkoztatásra szektorális megközelítésben

  27-41

  Domician Mate

  Views:

  162

  Recently, there have been serious debates attempting to explain the role of institutions and their interactions as they might influence the impact of economic growth on employment. However, essentially no clear theoretical consensus has yet emerged and several unanswered problems remain. From this point of view, one interesting question is how institutions matter, and also what kind of characteristics they should have in economies. In our estimations ws followed a sectoral approach to identify the main features of institutions. In order to demonstrate short and lon run economic processes we use an error-correction method to analyze how certain intitutions and their interactions determine employment growth in different market-and non-market oriented branches. All in all, we demonstrate that unions, minimum wages and unemployment benefits have influenced employment in different ways.

  JEL classification: J21, J45, E02.

• A német transzferrendszer mint a gazdasági visszaesés okozója

  Agnes Orosz

  Views:

  184

  According to the theory of optimal currency areas the most important advantage of monetary integration is its positive effect on economic growth. However, examining Germany we can notice that since German reunification economic growth and the convergence between East and West Germany has slowed down. These facts show that the operation of the German currency union is not optimal and its performance has not improved over the last twenty years. The criteria of the optimal currency area theory is endogenous due to the recent development of the theory. This means that a country is more likely to satisfy the criteria for entry into a curreny union ex post than ex ante. In the case of Germany, examining the trends of economic growth we can conclude the the German currency union has not become optimal in the last two decades. These facts raise the puzzling question of what are the specific circumstances hindering the improvement if Germany's monetary union despite the endogeneity of the optimal currency area criteria. To answer this question the study examines the interactions between monetary and political integration with special attention to the issues of fiscal policy. According to the study the German transfer system and the dependency on transfers explain the discrepancy between theory and empirics.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: E42, E62, E63, F01, F31, F36

• Integration of the CEE agri-food sector into the EU: What does trade theory and empirical evidence tell us?

  62-77

  Imre Ferto

  Views:

  149

  The article provides an overview on the main results of empirical research into the Integration of the CEE agri-food sector into the EU. Contrary to early expectations, countries in the region have not become major agri-food exporters. We can observe great diversity in trade specialisations, the patterns of intra-industry trade and price and quality competitiveness among countries and major product groups. These outcomes derive mainly from the differences in relative factor endowments and the different initial conditions of the countries concerned. The recent theoretical and empirical developments in international
  trade may help us to better understand the agri-food trade integration of new member states.

  JEL classification: Q12