The Academic Entrepreneur: Myth or Reality for Increased Regional Growth in Europe?

Knowledge flows from universities to the regional economy can take different forms ranging from formal research collaborations to consultancy and informal personal connections. One of the knowledge communication channels drawing substantial interest of both researchers and regional policy makers is academic spin-off firm formation. According to the concept of the “academic entrepreneur” (Etzkowitz) university spin-off firm formation has grown naturally from the academic culture of the US where professors traditionally behave very much like entrepreneurs while setting up and maintaining research labs, hiring research assistants, “marketing” research results in conferences and publications or networking with colleagues and funding agencies. Spinning off a company is just a step forward from such entrepreneurial tasks of academics. Thus according to this concept academic motivations are main drivers in university spin-off firm formation in the US. Despite this challenging view the empirical literature pays relatively little attention to the particular “academic” features of university spin-offs and rarely considers the specificities of university entrepreneurship most notably the role of scientists as entrepreneurs. Empirical evidence suggests that Europe performs less successfully than the US in transferring knowledge from university labs to the regional economy via spin-off companies. One potential reason behind this difference is that institutions that determine the continental European research system hold back the emergence of academic entrepreneurs. Thus it is the main research question in our paper whether those specific “academic” drivers behind university spin-off firm formation are present at all in the continental European context. The related question is whether professional characteristics of the academics, their social capital, the norms of academia and the academic and business environment support or hinder these academic motivations? This paper is based on interviews carried out with university researchers who actively participate in firm formation in Hungary. Hungary is an excellent European case since the features of its university system are rooted in the continental (mainly German) tradition, but it also inherits some characteristics from the even more centralized socialist (soviet) tradition.University, spin-off, academic entrepreneurship, regional university technology transfer

CONFLICTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL TAX LAW AND ANSWERS OF THE EUROPEAN TAX LAW

This study tries to show the essence of the international tax law, and gives a definition of it, as the origine of the international tax conflicts, but secondly the international tax law solved the international tax conflicts. One device of the solving method of the international tax law is the international treaties between the Member States about the avoidance of the double taxation. We should give a definition to the European tax law, as the result of the European tax harmonisation, but the main question is, that how can the European tax law connect to the international tax law? The European tax law is one part of the international tax law, it contents the 27 Member State’s national tax law, and their legal sources and own solutions of the international tax law’s conflicts. Furthermore in one hand the international tax conflicts are originated from the international and European tax law, but in second hand the international and European tax law is a legal-field, which gives solution for these conflicts and for the international tax problems. What kind of conflicts have the international and European tax law, and what kind of solutions have in the European tax law? This study try to show the most knowing international tax conflicts- as double taxation, tax evasion, tax discrimination - and the relief from it, the solutions and answers of the European tax law, like legal sources of the European tax law, and the cases of the European Court of Justice.international tax law, European tax law, tax discrimination, double taxation, avoidance of the double taxation, tax conflicts, tax cases, European Court of Justice.

Stability of Influence Maximization

The present article serves as an erratum to our paper of the same title, which was presented and published in the KDD 2014 conference. In that article, we claimed falsely that the objective function defined in Section 1.4 is non-monotone submodular. We are deeply indebted to Debmalya Mandal, Jean Pouget-Abadie and Yaron Singer for bringing to our attention a counter-example to that claim. Subsequent to becoming aware of the counter-example, we have shown that the objective function is in fact NP-hard to approximate to within a factor of $O(n^{1-\epsilon})$ for any $\epsilon > 0$. In an attempt to fix the record, the present article combines the problem motivation, models, and experimental results sections from the original incorrect article with the new hardness result. We would like readers to only cite and use this version (which will remain an unpublished note) instead of the incorrect conference version.Comment: Erratum of Paper "Stability of Influence Maximization" which was presented and published in the KDD1

Stagflation and monetary policy – Theoretical basics

Any recession in production – or drop in its growth rate – is limited in time. The persistence and depth of each recession, however, may be very different indeed. Often, it is only a decreased growth rate that is observable. If the rate of decrease is considerably higher, is also manifest in a falling absolute level of production, and is also extended in duration, special factors are at play. It must be thoroughly understood why the contractionary spiral emerging in a recession cannot be infinite. A number of factors cause this effect. The rate of decreasing consumption or decelerating growth of consumption is always lower compared to that of income, because the marginal propensity to save drops in times of recession. In such times, households use a portion of their accumulated savings for consumption. Also, the absolute decrease in investments always has a limit at various values in various cases because the annual investments in the corporate sector are not only adjusted to short periodical changes in demand but also to the size of a future capital stock deemed necessary. The state budget either does not reduce its expenses or, if recession is caused precisely by cutting back state expenses, does not continue decreasing expenses beyond an intended limit. By today, services have reached a considerable ratio within total economic performance, and the use of some of them cannot be eliminated even in a bad economic situation. Households would rather borrow credits or use their earlier savings to buy goods, or would request financial assistance from relatives in order not to have to cut back purchasing certain services, or only to a moderate extent. Finally, particularly in small and medium sized countries, foreign trade, and exports directly play an important role. If the setback is not concurrent in all countries, the continued rise in foreign demand sets a limit to declining economic performance

Economic recovery – a few topical theoretical problems

With a GDP decline of around 7.5 percent compared to the previous level we have probably reached the bottom of the crisis. The time to be spent here may vary depending on the concrete situation, but this is out of the scope of this paper. This article focuses on getting through the crisis. It discusses several economic correlations, especially those that are topical and important for the current state of the Hungarian economy. The question has recently been raised again: What can put the Hungarian economy on the road to recovery, and what growth rate can be expected in the longer run? A lot of people think that the state should play a crucial role in recovery. Of course, the role of the state is not negligible, but likewise, the mechanism that spontaneously affects recovery and later economic growth is not immaterial either. What is more, we can say that the operation of this mechanism is the fundamental momentum of recovery. There is currently great uncertainty about this topic. No wonder, since we have no experience about economic rejuvenation following the economic recession and the concurrent financial crisis. More rigorous studies have not been pursued, not even at theoretical level. This is, in part, due to the fact that the context was different earlier, under the socialist economic management, and also because after world war II recession was significantly smaller all over the world than in the current crisis. On top of that, in Hungary the study of civil economics was played down in the past forty years. This article examines whether the state budget can do anything for recovery. How are the correlations being complicated by the role of multinational companies in Hungary, as well as by the situation of small and medium-sized companies? What can be the task of monetary politics? What developments can be expected in exports, and in this respect, what can we expect from the rejuvenation of the global economy? To what extent should government policies fostering recovery pay attention to the factors of long-term economic growth? What is the role of the spontaneous mechanism in the recovery? How do external and internal factors contribute to recovery, what will fundamentally determine the turnaround after the economic slump, and how this will in turn determine the applicable economic policy? On the basis of reality, how strong and how dynamic will the expected recovery and growth be, respectively? The study begins with the examination of the role of the state budget, since a lot of people think that this is indispensable for the turnaround and the start of recovery

Crisis management in Hungary – Theoretical analysis

Hungary is currently burdened with crisis, in fact with several types of crisis. The economic crisis has unfolded after the global economic recession, triggered by the international financial crisis, reached Hungary. This is a natural consequence in a country where the export-import ratio accounts to 70 percent of the GDP. In addition, the country must overcome a serious financial crisis, which in part can be attributed to the financial crisis evolving in the international arena. In a financial crisis lenders are always cautious. They place the debtors' solvency under greater scrutiny, and countries burdened with economic and payment problems are given loans only at more stringent terms and conditions, if at all. This can also lead to a decline in production, since in such a case the decrease in imports, which are indispensable for the economy, may also trigger a drop in the GDP. In the absence of loans imports may plunge, and may bring economic performance down, too. This problem primarily affects countries that are heavily indebted, whose level of development is intermediate at best, and whose public finance balance has been negative for a longer period of time. The Hungarian economy is characterised by especially these features. On top of all this, the problem is not only that Hungary cannot evade the global financial and economic crisis in a globalising world economy, but also that due to its internal and external balance situation, Hungary is very much exposed both to economic and financial crises

Availability of food resources and habitat structure shape the individual‐resource network of a Neotropical marsupial

1. Spatial and temporal variation in networks has been reported in different studies. However, the many effects of habitat structure and food resource availability variation on network structures have remained poorly investigated, especially in individual‐ based networks. This approach can shed light on individual specialization of resource use and how habitat variations shape trophic interactions. 2. To test hypotheses related to habitat variability on trophic interactions, we investigated seasonal and spatial variation in network structure of four populations of the marsupial Gracilinanus agilis in the highly seasonal tropical savannas of the Brazilian Cerrado. 3. We evaluated such variation with network nestedness and modularity considering both cool‐dry and warm‐wet seasons, and related such variations with food resource availability and habitat structure (considered in the present study as environmental variation) in four sites of savanna woodland forest. 4. Network analyses showed that modularity (but not nestedness) was consistently lower during the cool‐dry season in all G. agilis populations. Our results indicated that nestedness is related to habitat structure, showing that this metric increases in sites with thick and spaced trees. On the other hand, modularity was positively related to diversity of arthropods and abundance of fruits. 5. We propose that the relationship between nestedness and habitat structure is an outcome of individual variation in the vertical space and food resource use by G. agilis in sites with thick and spaced trees. Moreover, individual specialization in resource‐rich and population‐dense periods possibly increased the network modularity of G. agilis. Therefore, our study reveals that environment variability considering spatial and temporal components is important for shaping network structure of populations

Qualitative Comparison of Community Detection Algorithms

Community detection is a very active field in complex networks analysis, consisting in identifying groups of nodes more densely interconnected relatively to the rest of the network. The existing algorithms are usually tested and compared on real-world and artificial networks, their performance being assessed through some partition similarity measure. However, artificial networks realism can be questioned, and the appropriateness of those measures is not obvious. In this study, we take advantage of recent advances concerning the characterization of community structures to tackle these questions. We first generate networks thanks to the most realistic model available to date. Their analysis reveals they display only some of the properties observed in real-world community structures. We then apply five community detection algorithms on these networks and find out the performance assessed quantitatively does not necessarily agree with a qualitative analysis of the identified communities. It therefore seems both approaches should be applied to perform a relevant comparison of the algorithms.Comment: DICTAP 2011, The International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and its Applications, Dijon : France (2011

Micro-behaviors and structural properties of knowledge networks: toward a 'one size fits one'cluster policy

The economic returns of cluster policies have been recently called into question. Based on a “one size fits all” approach consisting in boosting R&D collaborations and reinforcing network density, cluster policies are suspected to have failed in reaching their objectives. The paper proposes to go back to the micro foundations of clusters in order to disentangle the links between the long run performance of clusters and their structural properties. We use a simple agent-based model to shed light on how individual motives to build knowledge relationships can give rise to emerging structures with different properties, which imply different innovation and renewal capacities. The simulation results are discussed in a micro-macro perspective, and motivate suggestions to reorient cluster policy guidelines towards more targeted public-funded incentives for R&D collaboration