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• The Comparative Analysis of the Cultural Financing Models of France and Hungary

  50-67

  Akos Toth

  Views:

  180

  Both France and Hungary use the so called coordinated cultural financing model, in which the active role of the state is decisive. However, instead of producing a similar model, the level of the cultural sector value added to GDP in the two countries is different. The article’s aim is to answer this puzzle. The focus is on the role of institutions and state subsidy. The analysis tries to understand whether direct state subsidy plays a decisive role in the economic performance of the cultural sector. The analysis also shows whether the harmony of formal and informal institutions have a positive effect on the economic growth of the cultural sector. The assumption is that the size of direct government subsidy cannot increase economic growth. If the formal and informal institutions are in harmony, and if there is a long-run cultural policy strategy in a country, the cultural sector value added to GDP is higher.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classifications: Z10, Z11

• The role of the institutional system in the globalizing finance of culture

  131-148

  Akos Toth

  Views:

  99

  The article focuses on how the connection between the institutional system of a country and the role of the state changes in the financing of the cultural sphere. To examine the changes, the author analysis the financing model of the USA and the Russian Federation, countries which use very different methods and techniques for the financing of the cultural sphere. The author assumes in his hypothesis that in those countries which have an underdeveloped institutional system, the possibility of direct state support and control for the financing of the cultural sphere is much greater. The results of the analyses are tested on the cultural economy of the Netherlands where the cultural financing system exhibits characteristics of both the American and the Russian models at the same time.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: P14, P39, Z10, Z11

• Communitarisation in the cultural spheres of the member states of the European Union

  127-144

  Akos Toth

  Views:

  104

  The intstitutions of the European Union encourage the liberalisation of the cultural sector wirh the reduction of the coercive power of the member states. The article assumes that communitarisation in the cultural sphere exists although there is no EU Treaty (acquis) on cultural policy and the member states use different cultural financing models. The author first analyses the government and household expenditure for culture of the OECD countries, then compares the productivity and profitability indicators of the post socialist countries with the same indicators' EU 25 average.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: Z10, Z11

• The improvement and the new manifestation of the Veblenian conspicuous consumption theory

  23-35

  Karmen Kovacs

  Views:

  418

  This paper focuses on how the Veblenian conspicuous consumption theory has been developed further by the theorists of modern economics. The connection between status, status goods and conspicuous consumption is underlined in the discussion. It is emphasized that the price has a multiple role, however, the hypothesized positive relation between price and quantity is not necessarily valid. The wide-ranging motivations and consequences of conspicuous consumption are also analyzed. Finally, the new features of conspicuous consumption are discussed, that is, instead of wasting money on goods, cultural capital and taste have become the core of conspicuous consumption, and instead of focusing on wealth, the contexts of income have become relevant.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Codes: D11, Z13

• Unworthy poverty as social relations

  43-60

  Wolfgang Aschauer

  Eva Malovics

  Views:

  459

  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

• Our national economy after the transmission

  55-84

  Antal Stark

  Views:

  104

  This study looks through the key indicators of the Hungarian economic transition from the 90s until now. To make the Hungarian processes more understandable, we show it in international comparison with data from other post-socialist EU members. We then examine how the social processes and the economic changes fir together, emphasizing among other things the changes in health, education and cultural life.