Search

Search Results

• Freedom of the Markets versus Good Governance: Experiences in Central Europe

  35-61

  László Muraközy

  Views:

  102

  The market and the state, operation and characteristics of two institutions of key importance in the modern mixed economies, are investigated for the former socialist countries in this study. After two decades it can be seen more clearly what system has been established in the region, how it operates, and what its characteristics are. In the first part of the with the help of international comparisons we examine how free the market is, how good the rules are, and how much they help, or hinder, the fulfilment of its function. From an other aspect we compare the scope of the good governance and the size, the freedom and efficiency of the state. According to the evidence of the international studies examined, the former socialist countries established the forms of the market institutional system relatively quickly, but the operation and quality of these lagged significantly behind those of the developed countries. Also important conclusion of the study is that by the first decade of the millennium the characteristics of the former socialist countries are increasingly diverging from one another. Both the characteristics of the earlier socialism, and the more distant historical past which can be caught in the act within it, had and have an effect on the economic and social systems now established in Eastern and Central Europe.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: H1, P17, P27, P35

• International Higher Education League Tables – why are the best so good?

  127-142

  Zsuzsanna Kiss

  Views:

  89

  The study provides a comparative analysis of international higher education rankings. The article aims to analyze the role and performance of universities in today’s knowledge economy in transforming employment conditions. This paper aims to add an overview of the methodology of the global academic rankings, showing the benefits and difficulties of the creation of league tables and makes a proposal to improve the distortions. It gives a detailed empirical analysis of the countries’ results based on a comparison of three rankings. Hypothesis: the performance of countries with an English native language is better because of the particularities arising from the methodology, since the results obtained from research databases involved in measurements are primarily English-language publications and their citations, and furthermore the majority of the most prestigious journals appear in English.

  Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) code: I21, P52

• Our national economy after the transmission

  55-84

  Antal Stark

  Views:

  82

  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.

• A gazdasági növekedés gyorsításának esélyei Magyarországon 2030-ig

  5-26

  Peter Mihalyi

  Views:

  112

  The regime change in 1989/1990 has not produced the expected result: Hungary has not been able to catch-up with the Western market economies. Can Hungary grow 2-3 times faster then its competitors during the next 20 years, as the present Hungarian government declared in its economic plans? Can Hungary improve its relative position and catch-up with the per capita GDP level of the EU-27 average by 2030? The conclusion of the paper is that this is very unlikely to happen. But there is ample room for accelerating productivity growth, and in this regard, every percentage difference counts enormously in the long-term. Three factors of production are analyzed: the natural-physical-geographical endowments of Hungary (N), Labour (L) and the capital stock (C). The following new findings are discussed. First, contrary to the widely held view, the amount of labour currently used by the Hungarian economy is not low in international comparison. The education of the workforce is also adequate. The problem is its allocation: too many workers are employed in low productivity, small firms. The only way forward is to promote the concentration of enterprises, to support the increase in the number of medium-sized and large firms. Second, the rate of domestic savings needs to be increased considerably, to allow for a low-cost financing of investments. In turn, this requires a substantial reform in three areas: healthcare, pensions and higher education. As long as the welfare state exists in its present form and these three spending items are largely financed by the state, one cannot reasonably expect households to save and accumulate families" long-term reserves in financial assets. But before these changes happen the political alite must accept that the obstacles to productivity growth have to be removed from the legal and political stuctures.

  JEL classification: E66, O47, O50, O52

• The aspects of the Hungary's Adult Training

  36-55

  Edit Barizsne Hadhazi

  Istvan Polonyi

  Views:

  165

  The study surveys the most important aspects of the national adult training from educational economy point of view. The authors examine the national limits of legal rule of adult training. They present the different sub-systems of adult training i.e. the educational system, the non-educational system and the working place training characteristics of participation making international comparison too. We look over the target groups of adult-training and the participants motivation of the teaching arena. We also have a look at the domestic costs of the different froms of adult-training, and the division of this expenditure among the participants.