This paper assesses the network robustness of the technological capability base of 269 European metropolitan areas against the potential elimination of some of their capabilities. By doing so it provides systematic evidence on how network robustness conditioned the economic resilience of these regions in the context of the 2008 economic crisis. The analysis concerns calls in the relevant literature for more in-depth analysis on the link between regional economic network structures and the resilience of regions to economic shocks. By adopting a network science approach that is novel to economic geographic inquiry, the objective is to stress-test the technological resilience of regions by utilizing information on the co-classification of CPC classes listed on European Patent Office patent documents. We find that European metropolitan areas show heterogeneous levels of technology network robustness. Further findings from regression analysis indicate that metropolitan regions with a more robust technological knowledge network structure exhibit higher levels of resilience with respect to changes in employment rates. This finding is robust to various random and targeted elimination strategies concerning the most frequently combined technological capabilities. Regions with high levels of employment in industry but with vulnerable technological capability base are particularly challenged by this aspect of regional economic resilience.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries eased the burden of borrowers through loan forbearance. Using a representative sample of the Hungarian adult population, we investigate if time discounting and locus of control predict who takes up loan forbearance. We find convincing evidence that time discouting associates with the resort to forbearance: individuals who discount the future less are less likely to take up forbearance, even if we take into account their educational level and financial status. Data suggest that the channel through which time discounting and loan forbearance are related is savings. There is no statistically significant relationship between locus of control and forbearance takeup.

The potential restructuring of global value chains (GVCs) is a widely discussed question in current debates. At the same time, a proper way of capturing these value chains is challenging. This paper focuses on the automotive industry, using detailed data on firm-to-firm transactions in Hungary, as well as on cross-border sales and purchases. Its aim is twofold, capturing to what extent firms being connected to a GVC differ from other firms in the same industry, and what is the impact of integration into GVCs. Findings suggest that firms being part of GVCs tend to be larger, more productive, foreign-owned and having a higher level of intangible capital. There is some suggestive evidence that entering the GVC has a positive impact on size, productivity and per capita wage for certain firm groups and it is preceeded by increased imports of capital. Finally, there are also differences by employee composition.

David Ricardo (és Adam Smith) adóelméletének interpretációja a mai napig angolszász szemléletű, noha fogantatása francia (is) volt. A történeti előzmények felelevenítésének szándékát megerősítette, hogy az utóbbi évtizedben egyre több szerző elmélettörténeti visszatekintéssel alapozza meg gondolatmenetét. A Smith és Ricardo nevével fémjelzett klasszikus iskoláig nyúlnak vissza. Hátterükben azonban ott voltak a fiziokraták, akiktől átvették adóelméletük lényegét, az egyetlen adó, a földtulajdonosi járadékok közvetlen adóztatásának elvét. A járadékalapú jövedelmek keletkeznek, de nem termelnek gazdagságot, a köz(össég) céljaira igénybe vehetők. Adó-incidencia elemzésük is fiziokrata logikát követett. A tanulmány ismerteti a fiziokrata adózás alapelvei mellett egyes jelentős képviselőinek reform elképzelését-gyakorlatát. . (Nicolas Baudeau, Mercier de la Rivière, Turgot).  Végül a korai magyar ár-reformok történetéhez fűzött megjegyzések zárják a munkát. François Quesnay “Second probleme économique” (1763) írásának magyar fordítása olvasható a tanulmány 2. részében.

While an extensive literature investigates the effects of longer schooling, we know very little about what happens when compulsory schooling is shortened. This paper looks at the effects of a reform in Hungary that decreased the school leaving age from 18 to 16. We show that the reform increased the probability of being neither in education nor in employment and being inactive at ages 16-18 substantially while its effects on employment are not significantly different from zero in most specifications. These effects are similar among boys and girls but strongly heterogeneous by social background and ability. The reform had a moderate effect on teenage motherhood on average, but it increased the probability of giving birth substantially among the most disadvantaged girls. We conclude that through its heterogenous effects, the reform is expected to widen social inequalities.

This paper analyzes the driving factors of growth of quantities and prices of the new products for Hungarian firms between 2001 and 2016. It investigates how price levels are correlated with firm and market characteristics, and the time path of the share of new products. Larger and more productive firms were able to sell their new products at higher prices, though larger competition had a dampening role. Pricing patterns differ for all products, higher share of foreign ownership leads to lower export and import prices. The share of new products is negatively affected by size corroborated by the negative effect of both productivity and foreign ownership. Productivity does not have any role in price and quantity growth rates.

In 2013 the responsibility for school governance and funding has been transferred from local governments to a central government agency in Hungary. The key objectives of this reform, as stated by policy makers, was to mitigate interjurisdictional inequalities in education. This paper explores whether the reform had an equalizing effect on education resources on the one hand, and student achievement on the other. First, we estimate elasticities of per-student school expenditures to average income in municipalities. The results reveal a substantial equalization of school resources: before the reform rich municipalities had spent significantly more on education than poor ones, while after the reform no difference in school spending can be detected. Second, we ask whether the equalization of resources had an effect on inequalities in student achievement. Student achievement is measured by test score in grade 6 and grade 8. The results show no equalization in this respect, suggesting that inequalities in school quality were hardly affected by the reform.

This study aimed to use a concept mapping methodology (Trochim, 1986b) to develop a European framework of the needs of parents and guardians for supporting athletes combining sport and education (dual career). By means of a concept mapping methodology, we gathered 337 French, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Slovenian parents’ demographical data linked with their sorted and rated data of the 80 potential statements associated to parenting dual career athletes. In synthesizing the opinions, experience and needs of parents and guardians of dual career athletes, concept mapping served as a unique integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. The present framework provided sound theoretical underpinnings as well as quantitative basis to inform the development of educational platforms for empowering parenting dual carrier athletes, as well as be a foundation for future Pan-European dual career research on how these statements interact with each other, in different European contexts.

We contribute to the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature in two ways: (i) we consider how societal aspects are taken into account in research and innovation activities in four fundamentally different futures, as opposed to analysing current practices; and (ii) put the emphasis on the framework conditions, as opposed to focussing on RRI principles and instruments. In the Kingdom of RRI citizens participate directly in decision-making processes; Fortress Europe depicts a libertarian system; Failed Democracy is a populist regime; while Benevolent Green Eurocrats describes a technocratically coordinated strong state. The RRI concept is ignored, manipulated, or rather selectively applied in the latter three scenarios. The scenarios offer novel insights into the nature and repercussions of possible policy problems. We discuss issues related to efficacy and efficiency of policy-making; legitimacy of research and innovation activities; societal involvement; equity; and freedom of research in each scenario. We also posit that there is room for safeguarding meaningful interactions between the societal and professional actors in an innovation system even in the harshest framework conditions.

Megjelent mint:

Multiple futures for society, research, and innovation in the European Union: Jumping ahead to 2038, Journal of Responsible Innovation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2021.1978692

While it has been shown that university attendance is strongly predicted by parental education, we know very little about why some potential ‘first in family’ or first-generation students make it to university and others do not. This paper looks at the role of non-cognitive skills in the university participation of this disadvantaged group in England. We find that conditional on national, high-stakes exam scores and various measures of socioeconomic background, having higher levels of non-cognitive skills, specifically locus of control, academic self-concept, work ethic, and self-esteem, in adolescence is positively related to intergenerational educational mobility to university. Our results indicate that having higher non-cognitive skills helps potential first in family university students to compensate for their relative disadvantage, and they are especially crucial for boys. The most important channel of this relationship seems to be through educational attainment at the end of compulsory schooling.

Do labor mobility, and co-worker networks contribute to convergence or divergence between regions? Based on the previous literature, labor mobility contributes to knowledge transfer between firms. Therefore, mobility may contribute to decreasing productivity differences, while limited mobility to sustaining higher differences. The effect of co-worker networks, however, can be twofold in this process. They transmit information about potential jobs, which may enhance mobility of workers, even between regions, and this enhanced mobility may contribute to levelling differences. But if mobility between regions involves movement costs, co-worker networks may concentrate locally that may contribute to persistence of regional differences. In this paper we build an agent-based model of labor mobility across firms and regions with knowledge spillovers that reflects key empirical observations on labor markets. We analyze the impact of network information provided about potential employers in this model and find that it contributes to increasing inter-regional mobility, and subsequently to decreasing regional differences. We also find that density of co-worker networks, and also their regional concentration decrease, if network information is available.

We study bankruptcy problems in financial networks in the presence of general bankruptcy laws. The set of clearing payment matrices is shown to be a lattice, which guarantees the existence of a greatest and a least clearing payment. Multiplicity of clearing payment matrices is both a theoretical and a practical concern. We present a new condition for uniqueness that generalizes all the existing conditions proposed in the literature. Our condition depends on the decomposition of the financial network into strongly connected components. A strongly connected component which contains more than one agent is called a cycle and the involved agents are called cyclical agents. If there is a cycle without successors, then one of the agents in such a cycle should have a positive endowment. The division rule used by a cyclical agent with a positive endowment should be positive monotonic and the rule used by a cyclical agent with a zero endowment should be strictly monotonic. Since division rules involving priorities are not positive monotonic, uniqueness of the clearing payment matrix is a much bigger concern for such division rules than for proportional ones. We also show how uniqueness of clearing payment matrices is related to continuity of bankruptcy rules.