Search

Search Results

• The role of France in the economy of the EU

  207-224

  Mariann Eszter Kovacs

  Views:

  100

  The author examines the decisive role of France within the EU. After a preliminary examination of the principles of European integration and its historical development, the article analyses the netwrok of connections existing between the EU and the French economy, as well as the period of growth and retrenchment in its development. The main theme of the article is the debate over the stability and growth pact and the circumstances and consequences of the failure to comply with the pact's rules caused by the France's long-lasting budget. This failure calls into question, and in the long term may be fatal for the future of European integration and for the direction of a common supra-national economic policy and the national responses it requires. The common European currency, and the stability and future of the Euro are also affected, since this failure can influence the co-operative efforts of the various elements of the European Union in an unprecedented way. It also affects the relationships bewteen the smaller and larger countries, and the economic opportunities of all member states.

• The influence of intra-industry trade on adjustment costs and the synchronisation of boom cycles

  61-82

  Laszlo Erdey

  Views:

  111

  For researchers studying intra-industry trade and the methodology involved in measuring the phenomenon one of the most important driving forces was the assumption that the creation of economic integration would lead to lower adjustment costs than were characteristic of the traditional commercial model. Another result was that - according to empirical data - intra-industry trade would receive a strong incentive from liberalisation, and that the accompanying adjustment costs would be lower than in cases there there was specialisation bewteen branches. In so far as this is demonstrable, proponents of attempts to achieve general integration offered a convenient weapon to their opponenets, who consistently argued back that it was precisely the difficult application of this process and its drawn-out and 'painful' nature that caused high costs. The first part of the article is devoted to a discussion of this debate, while the second part focuses on the role intra-industry trade plays in harmonisation with business cycles. The article shows that an examination of the intensity and dynamism of intra-industry trade allows a much more sophisticated analysis of a country's position in the world economy than is usually possible.

• Még egyszer a kapitalizmus és a verseny természetéről: Viszontválasz Szakolczai Györgynek

  189-189

  Peter Mihalyi

  Views:

  112

• A washingtoni konszenzus és a posztszocialista országok: Hozzászólás Mihályi Péter cikkéhez

  167-188

  Gyorgy Szakolczai

  Views:

  103

• Unworthy poverty as social relations

  43-60

  Wolfgang Aschauer

  Eva Malovics

  Views:

  426

  The paper deals with recent discourses on poverty, exemplified by the case of Hungarian Romany community. For this purpose we first deduce from the theoretical framework of the underclass three way of viewing extreme poverty: the political-economic type that traces poverty back to developments of the whole society; the culturalistic type in which poverty is the result of certain behavioural deficiencies (the “culture”) of the poor; and the interdependency type that regards poverty as induced by factors in the society as a whole and perpetuated by poverty specific cultural elements of the poor themselves.
  In the second part of the study we discuss three fields of discourse with respect to the question of which of the mentioned types can be found there. In the field of social sciences it is preeminently the interdependency type which occurs, probably because of its capability to link many, even heterogeneous, observations. In public discourse – analyzed by considering an internet debate and two so-called scandals – the culturalistic type dominates: Romanies are poor, because they have Romany cultural (behavioural) deficiencies. The Romanies themselves mainly use elements of the political-economic type, explaining poverty in terms of general impoverishment, regional neglect, and group discrimination.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: I32, J15, J16, O15

• Twenty-one Economic Arguments against an Unconditional Basic Income

  5-29

  Istvan Csillag

  Peter Mihalyi

  Views:

  362

  In 2013/14 there has been an intense public debate both in the European Union and in Hungary on the feasibility of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) support. In the Hungarian context, the publication of a 100-page proposal was an important milestone, in which a group of experts applied the UBI concept to the present circumstances. The study, the brainchild of István Bánfalvi, a distinguished social policy practitioner, proposed the following specific amounts as from January 2015: HUF 25,000 for children (≈ EUR 83), HUF 50,000 for adults and HUF 75,000 for expectant mothers. The present paper’s first objective was to challenge the entire 25-50-75 concept from both theoretical and practical-administrative perspectives. In addition, we tried to show that income poverty in Hungary is much less of a problem than generally presumed. Our final conclusion is that from a poverty alleviation point of view the geographical remobilization of the Hungarian Roma population is by far the most important issue. Roma living in small rural settlements should be assisted to move towards large cities, where the chances of finding work, education and health care are much better.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: H21, I38, J15