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• Political budget cycles: fiscal cycle effects in state expenditures in Poland

  47-62

  Agnes Halasz

  Views:

  125

  In this paper we aim to investigate what kind of role fiscal cycles played in the development of the state budget balances in Poland between 1989 and 2011. Overall, the results of the latest research have found that political budget cycles (PBC) are more typical in less developed countries with a shorter period of experience with democratic institutions, such as the post-socialist transition economies. Nevertheless, empirical studies point out that this phenomenon has been disappearing over time as voters learn how democratic institutions and political manipulation operate. However, this theory could not be proved by testing the pattern of Poland, neither in the case of budget balances nor for state expenditures. Despite the fact that some fiscal cycle effects were found in public sector wages and pensions in the election period of 1997 and 2001, these proved to be temporary, and simultaneously some other measures were identified that counterbalanced the effects of pork barrel spending. Overall, the cyclical evolution of the budget balances in Poland, particularly in the nineties, was not a result of political budget cycles.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classifications: D72, E62, H3

• The Relevance of the Washington Consensus for the Post-communist Countries

  5-25

  Peter Mihalyi

  Views:

  217

  The Washington Consensus (WC) is 20 years old now. With hindsight, its main significance is the unification of the normative economics. Prior to the WC, it was widely accepted that different policies should be pursued in the developed and in the underdeveloped economies. It was a sheer coincidence that the emergence of WC occurred a few months before the collapse of the communist systems of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Many scholars believe that the WC is responsible for the recurring economic crisis of the last two decades. I reject this view. A 200-year track record confirms that depressions and financial crisis have been always the intrinsic components of market economies – for the reasons identified by Marx and Schumpeter long time ago.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: F02, F23, F41, P11, P36

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

  5-17

  Zsuzsa Bekker

  Views:

  127

  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 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.

• Neumann's model and the cycles

  14-19

  Andras Brody

  Views:

  103

  Neuman has created his model to verify the theoretical existence of balance. The assumptions of the model give an explanation to the existence of the cycles. They derive from two peculiarities of the model, which Neumann concludes from the operation of the market. The first peculiarity is that balance comes about in the so-called saddlepoint. It is characterized by maximum production and minimum profit. The second is crossregulation, where excess profit stimulates growth, whereas oversupply decreases prices.