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  • Openness and growth
    126-134
    Views:
    102

    The classical theory of commerce encourages the liberalization of international trade on the grounds that this contributes considerably to the growth of welfare. This study sets out to explore this hypothesis empirically by analysing the relationship between external market openness and per capita GDP examined in twenty-two OECD countries between 1950 and 2000. The results bear out to support the existence of a positive correlation. The novelty of the study is that the author pays special attention to the temporal aspects of the interaction between openness and per capita GDP which can be characterised in terms of a nonstationary and nonlinear trend, as expected.

  • Prognosis of the Roma population in Hungary by region till 2061
    39-74
    Views:
    944

    In our paper we try to give an overall picture about the countrywide and regional demographic characteristics of the Hungarian Roma population, to make a roll-forward calculation of the next decades until 2061 by region. It indicates the actuality of the study that in the last decades the population of the Hungarian Roma minority and its rate according to the whole Hungarian population permanently and materially increased. In the next decades in both further growth is expected, but the speed of this growth will be slower and slower. The fertility and the mortality of the Roma population will decrease, life expectancy will increase, these result in the increase of the rate of the aged population. Out estimation indicates that until 2061 the age pyramid of the gypsies’ changes, it will be more and more similar to the present one of the whole Hungarian population.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: C82, J11, J13, J19

  • Chance for a more liveable Hungary
    5-18
    Views:
    89

    This study examines the question of how successful the transition of Hungary in social fields has been over the last two decades. It comes to the conclusion that, besides the successes in the economy and the deficits in the social spheres, the reserves of the first one and a half decades are approaching exhaustion. The accession to the EU creates a chance, but not a guarantee, for the next period to be a success. The challenges for the country are very different in 2007 from what they were in 1995. For this reason we try to show directions for sustainable growth and more fruitful social politics.

  • The role of franchise as a governance form in the economy
    59-83
    Views:
    158

    Today franchise is becoming an increasingly common form of governance. Its popularity can be explained by the fact that a company can quickly expand and develop with the help of this business model. The franchise system affects the whole economy positively because it creates jobs and contributes to GDP. The paper is concerned with analyzing the role of franchise networks in the US economy which is considered to be the home of franchise, and also in European economy. Surveys, published by the International Franchise Association and the European Franchise Federation, provide information about the number of units, employment, payroll, the value of economic output and contributions of franchised networks to GDP. These data indicate that the franchise sector is playing a more and more important role in the economy, outperform other sectors, and considered to be the main engine of employment and economic growth.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: D22, L14

  • Tőkepiacok nyolc új EU-tagországban – látszat- vagy valós fejlettség
    183-198
    Views:
    89

    A tanulmány arra keresi a választ, hogy mi az Európai Unióhoz frissen csatlakozott, volt tervgazdaságú nyolc ország tőkepiacának valós szerepe és lehetősége. A szerző bemutatja, hogy – bár a gazdasági növekedés szempontjából kívánatos a vegyes pénzügyi közvetítés, így a bankrendszer mellett a tőkepiac hatékony működése – a pénzügyi globalizáció hatásai miatt a vizsgált országok tőzsdéinek fejlődése nem lehet párhuzamos az általános intézményrendszer mélyülésével. A tanulmány a szabványosított piacok szerepének kiemelése mellett különböző alapvető stratégiákat is elemez.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: F36, G14, G15

  • Market institutions precede market beliefs: a test with cross-country regressions
    3-30
    Views:
    228

    The paper examines the literature on culture, economic growth and institutions to derive hypotheses about the relationships between market beliefs, institutions, and productivity. It then tests these hypotheses with cross-country regressions. First, it points out that each of the four cause-and-effect hypotheses of the possible relationships have an economic literature, in that market beliefs are seen as parts of culture. Second, the paper tests these hypotheses by making use of the fact that they consider different variables as exogenous ones. Measures of market beliefs are the coefficients of the country-dummies in the regressions run with individual data from the World Values Survey. The tests support the two hypotheses which hold that it is institutions, not market beliefs, that are exogenous.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: L26, O43, P16

  • Chile and the Global Depression
    132-146
    Views:
    112

    The 2007-2009 economic crisis ended an exceptional, five year-long economic boom for Chile and other countries in Latin America. The most beneficial economic outcome of the upswing was the fundamental improvement of the region’s countries in terms of the current crisis, which greatly reduce these countries’ vulnerability to external economic shocks. Based on the previous assumption several economists shared the opinion that “This time things are different”. That is, the fate of the continent in the current crisis will be decided differently as the global downturn has barely affected the region’s economic indicators. However, from September 2008 it has become apparent that the continent’s economy remains vulnerable. The crisis, which has infected the real economy through multiple channels, has reached two major victims of the recession, - Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe – leaving them with a decline in GDP per capita and the slowdown of economic growth. Conversely, Chile experienced a decline of a lesser extent due to its structural reforms and was able to re-orientate to its previous growth path much quicker than the rest of the continent’s economy after the ending of the crisis.

    JEL classification: O54, H12, O20

  • The dynamic of Hungary's Agro-Food Trade in the Global Economy
    26-35
    Views:
    87

    We analyse the evolving pattern of Hungary's agro-food trade using recently developed emprirical procedures based around the classic Balassa index and its symmetric transformation. The extent of trade specialisation exhibits a declining trend; 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 a less persistent pattern. They are stable for product groups with comparative disadvantage, but product groups with weak or strong comparative advantage show significant variation. The results reinforce the finding of a general decrease in specialisation but do not support the idea of self-reinforcing mechanisms, emphasised strongly in much of the endogenous groeth and trade literature.

  • Some economic aspects of higher education quality
    14-30
    Views:
    263

    Based on the world's most renowned university rankings, OECD annual reports and Eurostat data, this paper seeks to demonstrate that a competitive economy requires competitive (higher) education and that there is a significant correlation between the quality of higher education and economic development. Furthermore, in this process, the higher education quality assurance organization system has an outstanding task and responsibility through the formation of quality culture, guidelines, helpful research, summary of good practices and making constructive suggestions. Finally, it points out that close collaboration between universities and agencies with stakeholders is a priority area, which could contribute to a much more capability-based output system in the longer term. It also considers it desirable to make the relationship between universities and scientific research networks and research institutes closer and more vibrant (where it is not).

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: H52, I22, I23, I25, I26, O15

  • Sustainability of growth in countries with diverse backgrounds in the light of main international indices
    145-168
    Views:
    91

    The paper tries to answer why fossil fuel abundant countries with diverse backgrounds perform differently depending on the dominance of the advantages or disadvantages accruing from natural resource wealth. With the contribution of the most popular competitiveness and institutional indices the determining factors are indentified. The distinctive factors are market efficiency, the quality of the business environment, innovative capability, the quality and efficiency of governmental, market and judicial institutions, the low level of corruption and the existence of political and civil freedom.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: O13, O17, Q32

  • Political leadership and economic growth: Do the leaders matter? A vezető személye számít?
    101-116
    Views:
    129

    The paper analyses the role political leadership plays in economic growth by reviewing the literature that argues for, or presents evidence on, the proposition that leadership and the leader him/herself are crucial factors in economic growth. The article considers institutional economics as a starting point, a field which, so far, has paid little attention to the role of individuals and only focuses on the significance of institutions. The institutional theory of economic development has been criticized for using endogenous indicators and for only emphasising political output. However, political leaders are also able to make good and efficient economic policies. That is the reason leaders do matter

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Classification: B3, O4, P48

  • Technológia és szervezeti innovációk kölcsönhatása: az e-munkavégzés elterjedésének példája Új munkavégzési formák, mint az új fejlődési pályák hordozói?
    47-68
    Views:
    106

    A kilencvenes évtized ún. transzformációs gazdaságaival foglalkozó társadalomtudományi vitájával összehasonlítva meglepő, hogy a XXI század elején viszonylag szerény az érdeklődés a poszt - szocialista
    gazdaságok új fejlődési útjainak vizsgálata iránt. Elemzésünk célja a közép-európai régióban fejlődő piacgazdaságok új fejlődési útjainak azonosítása. Pontosabban: szeretnénk felhívni a figyelmet a globalizálódás, az információs és kommunikációs technológiák gyors elterjedésének és a különböző típusú piacok deregulációjának kontextusában megjelenő tudásgazdaságba való bekapcsolódás lehetőségeire, illetve azok kihasználását elősegítő és korlátozó néhány tényező szerepére. A tanulmány három részből áll. Az első, bevezető fejezetben az ún. transzformációs gazdaságok fejlődésében jól kimutatható különböző fejlődési ciklusok jellemzésére vállalkozunk, jelezve az ún. bejárt úttól való függés és az ún. intézményi vákuum megközelítések szerepét az átalakulási folyamat megértésében. Ezt követően, az elemzés röviden jellemzi a közvetlen külföldi tőkebefektetések (FDI) vezérelte gazdasági modernizáció fontosabb eredményeit (pl. foglalkoztatás, termelékenység növekedés, export, keresetek és az innováció) és olyan problémáit, mint a gazdaságfejlődés aszimmetrikus jellege. Az új fejlődési pálya tartalmát, „tanuló gazdaságba” való bekapcsolódással valamint a kiegyensúlyozottabb gazdasági szerkezet létrehozásával azonosítják a szerzők Az utóbbival összefüggésben, a tanulmány a mikro-, kis- és középvállalati (KKV) szektor szerepének felértékelődését hangsúlyozza. A tanulmány második és harmadik része, a nemzetközi kutatási tapasztalatokra építve jelzi a közép-európai gazdaságok, ezen belül a magyar gazdaság részvételének lehetőségeit a gyorsan fejlődő tudásgazdaság globális értékláncában. Az elemzés felhívja a figyelmet arra, hogy a régió poszt - szocialista gazdaságai viszonylag vonzó célterületei az olyan nagyobb hozzáadott értékeket képviselő tevékenységek kihelyezése
    számára, mint az általános üzleti funkciók. Mindazonáltal, e kedvező pozíciók több szempontból is törékenyek. Egyfelől a globális értékláncra jellemző változások gyorsak, és a tanuló-innovatív szervezetek kritikus tömegének folyamatos létrehozására van szükség. Másfelől, a kritikus tömeg megteremtése szinte lehetetlen az KKV - szektorba tartozó vállalkozások egyéni és kollektív (hálózati) tanulási és innovatív képességének fejlesztése nélkül. Az elemzés – szintén nemzetközi kutatási tapasztalatok felhasználásával – jelzi az olyan új munkavégzési formák, mint például a távmunka elterjedését befolyásoló szervezeti és kulturális tényezőket. Ezzel összefüggésben a szerzők az információs és kommunikációs technológiák hatékony használatát befolyásoló szervezeti innovációk, valamint az ezekhez kötődő egyéni és főleg szervezeti (kollektív) tanulási folyamatok jelentőségét hangsúlyozzák. Végül, az elemzés összegzéseként, a szerzők röviden felvázolják azokat a kihívásokat, amelyekre mind a kutatóknak, mind a gyakorlati szakembereknek, mint társadalmi szereplőknek válaszolniuk kell a magyar gazdaság új fejlődési pályára állításának érdekében.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: O33; L23;F23.

  • A német transzferrendszer mint a gazdasági visszaesés okozója
    Views:
    160

    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

  • Eastern-European education and economy
    73-82
    Views:
    97

    The main reason for the inability of the Eastern-European region to catch up economically is thought by many to be the fact that for a decisive period the state curtailed the incentive power of private property. The harmful effect of this was aggravated by the arms race. Contrary to this, this paper claims that the main reason is the underdevelopmnet of the population's knowledge base. The direct factor in this is the mistaken education policy, which because of the emphasis on quaility in schooling, imparted a low and weak knowledge base to the growing generation. The author claims that without a general and radical reform of education the eastern European region and Hungary as well, will lag behind in international competition.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL): I21, I28, O15

  • Regulatory Coherence and Economic Growth
    33-54
    Views:
    116

    The paper is aimed at examining differences in market regulation across countries. Its starting point is the puzzle that poor countries apply more regulatory measures than rich ones do, although it has been empirically shown that those countries that regulate less grow faster. To explain this contradiction, the paper introduces the concept of regulatory coherence, and tries to explain the differences in this concept, together with the differences in the general level of regulation. The main argument is that regulatory coherence as well as the general level of regulation is dependent on the external, broad institutional system, because this affects the incentives of the regulators. The paper tries to support this theiretical argument empirically by a cluster analysis.

    Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: B53, M13, L51