Corruption as a Deviant Social Attitude

Corruption is a specific field of cooperation between social sectors. Corruption is a deviant behaviour, which can be traced back to several causes: the nature of economic and social regime as well as cultural aspects. The aim of corruption is to obtain advantages. The private advantages, however, are usually accompanied by significant social disadvantages. Corrupt behaviour often becomes a social norm. This paper analyses corruption as a deviant social attitude. Examining the countries of the Central Eastern European region, it states that they are moderately infected with corruption, which requires a national strategy against corruption and the establishment of institutional conditions for the implementation of the strategy. The paper underlines that corruption should be addressed not only within a national framework, it is also necessary to build up close co-operation among countries belonging to the same socio-economic system.integrity, norm, bribery, State Audit Office, public funds

Spectral expansion for finite temperature two-point functions and clustering

Recently, the spectral expansion of finite temperature two-point functions in integrable quantum field theories was constructed using a finite volume regularization technique and the application of multidimensional residues. In the present work, the original calculation is revisited. By clarifying some details in the residue evaluations, we find and correct some inaccuracies of the previous result. The final result for contributions involving no more than two particles in the intermediate states is presented. The result is verified by proving a symmetry property which follows from the general structure of the spectral expansion, and also by numerical comparison to the discrete finite volume spectral sum. A further consistency check is performed by showing that the expansion satisfies the cluster property up to the order of the evaluation.Comment: 38 pages, 1 eps figure

Change of labour productivity on farms in European Union member countries (2004-2011)

In 2004, eight Central and Eastern European countries joined the European Union. Their agriculture was significantly behind the majority of the 15 former EU member countries both from technical and produc tivity perspectives. In the common market the competitiveness of products and producers is a key factor. One important factor of competitiveness is labour productivity, which can be divided into partial factors such as technical equipment (tools) and the resulting productivity from those tools. The study examines the changes of these two partial productivity factors in Poland and Hungary as well as the countries integrated in 2004. The research question was whether the Central and Eastern European countries were able to shorten the gap behind EU-15 countri.es. The results indicate that over the course of a decade labour productivity in Hungarian farms increased, however, the pace of farm investments lagged far behind the EU-15 countries, resulting in more efficient capital use. The rate of Polish farm investments in agriculture was higher than that of the EU-15 coun tries, while the relative disadvantage in labour productivity, as well as in capital productivity did not decreas

Games of farmers – to cooperate or not?

Signs of the crisis of the Hungarian agriculture are in relation with the economic and social model that has become rigid throughout the past two decades. The evolved structure of agricultural holdings the networks among the farmers have been restructured as well as have become losen. The degree of trust has decreased. Based on the principles of the modern economic schools, e.g. the game theory, the study examines how the existing trust level among farmers affects the farmers’ preferences of choice among the different forms of dependencies, as well as which factors affect the individual utility functions, focused on the role of subsidies from the social transaction costs. Due to the information asymmetry between farmers and the lack of confidence, the individual and the social expenditures are higher than economically justifable. Based on a simulation model the paper examines the payoffs of the farms as well as the community from the point of view of machinery use and investment strategies

Changes of labour productivity on farms in Central and Eastern Europe countries after European Union accession

The accession of Central-Eastern European countries in 2004 and 2007 has placed the agriculture of these countries in the context of new economic policy and market competition. Former research has led to the conclusion that the majority of agricultural producers in the countries of the region are at a significant disadvantage in regards to productivity compared to the farmers of the countries integrated into the EU earlier. The research has examined what – if any – changes have been made during the elapsed period and whether there is any convergence in regard to country groups and different farm size units to the level of farming productivity in field crop farms of more developed countries. The research was based on EU FADN data which provide d data until 2009. Figures of five full fiscal years are enough to reveal some tendencies. The research has evaluated the characteristics of changes ( with longitudinal analysis) by utilizing the indices of partial efficiency. By using the status attainment theory, an attempt was made to find an explanatory context between the components with income generating capacity for farms and labour productivity. The main conclusion of the research is that the convergence of countries a nd the varying economic size of farms were different iated and productivity substantially affected the added value of produc tion potential

Keleti Partnerség kereskedelmi célkitűzéseinek 10 éves egyenlege a V4-ek szemszögéből

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative was launched on 7 May 2009, at the Prague summit of EU Member States. The setting up of an initiative that facilitates closer co-operation with the Eastern European region has been an important objective of the V4 countries since they acceded to the European Union (EU). Therefore, after more than 10 years of its creation, it is worth examining the results of the EaP from the V4 perspective. This study provides an overview of the trade policy achievements of the EaP both from an institutional point of view and more importantly by assessing the evolution of trade flows between the V4 countries and EaP partners. On the institutional side, the picture is mixed. While the EU managed to conclude Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, the cooperation agreements negotiated with Armenia and Azerbaijan are much less ambitious mainly due to geopolitical and political reasons, and no new agreement could be negotiated with Belarus. These mixed results can be attributed in part to the Russian pressure on these countries, but the fact that the EU could not offer them the future perspectives of EU Membership also played an important part. In terms of trade in goods flows, the EaP can be seen as a success for V4 countries. The V4 import from EaP partners more than doubled and exports almost doubled over the last 10 years. Among V4 countries Poland dominates the trade flows with EaP partners but in terms of growth, it is Hungary whose trade grew most dynamically with the EaP region. For V4 countries, Ukraine is the most important trading partner among the EaP countries, while Armenia is the least relevant. Between 2009 and 2018, most of the EaP countries could diversify their exports to the V4 countries and the export composition has shifted towards processed goods and products with higher added value. The exports from V4 countries were already diversified and contained higher added value products, but this trend has intensified further. The main export products of V4 countries to the EaP region include machinery and transport equipment, manufactured goods and chemicals. According to the statistics there is evidence that trade grew more dynamically with those EaP partners with whom the EU has concluded DCFTAs and this trend is expected to continue in the future

Changes of foreign direct investment in agribusiness in the Central-Eastern Europe at the early 2000's

The business experts could witness major changes in the targets of international capital flow during the last two decades. The Central-Eastern European economic and social transition that was started in the early 1990s has created good conditions for the international investments. The new target of foreign direct investments ñ besides the Asian regions ñ depended on the changes of political and economic system going on in the countries concerned. The different pace of changes and the privatization of state properties determined the share of individual countries from the capital import. The early eminent countries were replaced by new eminent ones, and the capital inflow replaced brown field investments ñ that dominated at the beginning ñ with green field investments. The paper examines the worldwide and regional tendencies of foreign direct investments of the 1990ís and the 2000ís, the share of individual countries within the region as well as the changes in the sectoral distribution. Relations are searched for the changes of position of Hungary, as well as among the economic-social processes in the country

A magyar külkereskedelem fejlődésének irányai : a kereskedelem alakulása az EU új-generációs szabadkereskedelmi partnereivel

In the last 30 years, the Hungarian foreign trade has undergone major changes in terms of both product structure and partners. From the 90’s – mainly due to the significant amount of inward Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) – Hungarian trade ties with the European Union have become stronger and – by the country’s accession – the integration process of the Hungarian trade into the EU has been realised in fact. Since the Hungarian accession, the EU Member States are the main destination of the Hungarian foreign trade and the increasing trend is continuing. However, the Hungarian extra-EU export increased to a greater extent than the intra-EU export. In this study we analysed the correlation between the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) of the EU and the remarkable increase of the Hungarian extra-EU export. Four new-generation EU FTAs were analysed: the agreements with Ukraine, Canada, Korea and Japan. The analyses – unlike many other studies -does not only cover trade in goods with these FTA partners but trade in services and FDI flows as well. The result shows that the FTAs had a trade creation effect with Ukraine, Canada and Korea – especially for the Hungarian export. The only exception is Japan, but in that case short time has passed since the FTA became applicable. In case of Ukraine, the Hungarian export has doubled, to Canada it grew by 60% and to Korea grew by 50% in the first 5 years but since then it stagnated. It is important to underline the growing importance of trade in services where Hungary has a massive surplus with each partner and in case of Japan and Korea, this surplus helps to rebalance the substantial deficit of trade in goods. Although the FDI data are less reliable, they explain the reasons for the important merchandise trade deficit vis-a-vis Korea and Japan to some extent. As there is a massive FDI stock in Hungary originating from these countries, the manufacturing plants need input from these countries to be able to produce and export finished products mainly to the European internal market. On the other hand, the massive Hungarian merchandise trade surplus vis-à-vis Canada can be explained by the Canadian firms established in Hungary re-exporting part of their production to Canada