Inflation persistence in Central and Eastern European countries

This article studies inflation persistence with time-varying coefficient autoregressions for twelve central European countries, in comparison with the United States and the euro area. Inflation persistence tends to be higher in times of high inflation. Since the oil price shocks, inflation persistence has declined both in the US and the euro-area. In most central and eastern European countries, for which our study covers 1993-2012, inflation persistence has also declined, with the main exceptions of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, where persistence seems to be rather stable. These findings have implications for the conduct of monetary policy and for a possible membership in the euro area. We also conclude that the OLS estimate of an autoregression is likely upward biased relative to the time-average of time-varying parameters, when the parameters change

The Advantage is at the Ladies: Brain Size Bias-Compensated Graph-Theoretical Parameters are Also Better in Women's Connectomes

In our previous study we have shown that the female connectomes have significantly better, deep graph-theoretical parameters, related to superior "connectivity", than the connectome of the males. Since the average female brain is smaller than the average male brain, one cannot rule out that the significant advantages are due to the size- and not to the sex-differences in the data. To filter out the possible brain-volume related artifacts, we have chosen 36 small male and 36 large female brains such that all the brains in the female set are larger than all the brains in the male set. For the sets, we have computed the corresponding braingraphs and computed numerous graph-theoretical parameters. We have found that (i) the small male brains lack the better connectivity advantages shown in our previous study for female brains in general; (ii) in numerous parameters, the connectomes computed from the large-brain females, still have the significant, deep connectivity advantages, demonstrated in our previous study.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1501.0072

Időben változó együtthatójú ökonometriai modellek

A cikk bevezetést nyújt az időben változó együtthatójú lineáris ökonometriai modellek megoldási módozataiba és elemzi ökonometriai képességeiket. Elsőként az állapot-tér modellkeretben működő Kalman-szűrőt és a hozzá szorosan kapcsolódó (ám kevéssé ismert) rugalmas legkisebb négyzetek módszerét ismertetjük, majd az alternatívaként használható Markov-típusú rezsimváltó modellt mutatjuk be. A két modellcsalád kvalitásait szimulációkkal illusztráljuk

The Graph of Our Mind

Graph theory in the last two decades penetrated sociology, molecular biology, genetics, chemistry, computer engineering, and numerous other fields of science. One of the more recent areas of its applications is the study of the connections of the human brain. By the development of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (diffusion MRI), it is possible today to map the connections between the 1-1.5 cm$^2$ regions of the gray matter of the human brain. These connections can be viewed as a graph: the vertices are the anatomically identified regions of the gray matter, and two vertices are connected by an edge if the diffusion MRI-based workflow finds neuronal fiber tracts between these areas. This way we can compute 1015-vertex graphs with tens of thousands of edges. In a previous work, we have analyzed the male and female braingraphs graph-theoretically, and we have found statistically significant differences in numerous parameters between the sexes: the female braingraphs are better expanders, have more edges, larger bipartition widths, and larger vertex cover than the braingraphs of the male subjects. Our previous study has applied the data of 96 subjects; here we present a much larger study of 426 subjects. Our data source is an NIH-founded project, the "Human Connectome Project (HCP)" public data release. As a service to the community, we have also made all of the braingraphs computed by us from the HCP data publicly available at the \url{http://braingraph.org} for independent validation and further investigations.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1512.01156, arXiv:1501.0072

Tradition and Modernization. Contemporary Hungarian Popular Cinema

This article provides an overview of the recent trends and problems of Hungarian popular cinema with special regard to its cultural context outlining the process of recognition of popular cinema over the past twenty years in Hungary. In general Hungarian cinema is characterised by middle-range genres (dominantly comedy) and not by a large scope. This was the case in the 1930s and 1940s during the ’golden age’ of Hungarian comedies and popular cinema. And this typifies contemporary Hungarian popular cinema as well. However, the first decade after the political changes, the 1990s was characterised by a return to the tradition of the classical Hungarian comedies and only the 2000s brought the modernization of Hungarian popular cinema.This article provides an overview of the recent trends and problems of Hungarian popular cinema with special regard to its cultural context outlining the process of recognition of popular cinema over the past twenty years in Hungary. In general Hungarian cinema is characterised by middle-range genres (dominantly comedy) and not by a large scope. This was the case in the 1930s and 1940s during the ’golden age’ of Hungarian comedies and popular cinema. And this typifies contemporary Hungarian popular cinema as well. However, the first decade after the political changes, the 1990s was characterised by a return to the tradition of the classical Hungarian comedies and only the 2000s brought the modernization of Hungarian popular cinema

Elemzések időben változó paraméterű modellekkel = Essays on Time Varying Parameter Models

Az értekezés négy önálló tanulmányból áll négy fő fejezetben, amelyek témáját összeköti az időben változó paraméterű ökonometriai modellek alkalmazása. Elsőként áttekintést adunk az időben változó paraméterű regressziók lehetséges becslési módszereiről, a következő három fejezetben pedig a módszerek különböző gazdasági alkalmazásait mutatjuk be. A dolgozat új tudományos eredményeiről. A Kalman-szűrő és rugalmas legkisebb négyzetek módszere közötti elméleti összefüggést már feltárták, azonban ilyen mélységű szimulációs összehasonlítás korábban nem létezett. A magyar szakirodalom számára az első fejezet azért is hiánypótló, mert az időben változó paraméterű modellek még idehaza kevéssé elterjedt. A második fejezet elsőként végzi el az inflációs perzisztencia időben változó paraméterű modelles vizsgálatát kelet- és közép-európai országokon és vonja le azt a következtetést, hogy a perzisztencia nagyrészt csökkent ezekben az országokban. A harmadik fejezet hasonlóan elsőként becsli a munkanélküliség rátáját Gordon módszerével közép-európai országokon. Az utolsó fejezet elsőként vizsgálja az időben változó kointegrációs kapcsolatot világszintű adatbázison, új modellváltozatot épít, és elsőként mutatja meg, hogy az így kibecsült időben változó együttható együtt mozog más tőkepiaci nyitottsági értékekkel. _____ The thesis consists of four independent papers which are connected through the topic of time varying parameter models. The first chapter reviews the time-varying regression model and presents its solution methods, while the next three chapters carry out applied research using time varying parameter models in the field of macroeconomics. The second and third chapters are also available as separate English language articles. Last we sum up the novelties in our work. The models in the first chapter are standard, however, the simulation is fairly unique in the way that it not only compares Kalman-filtering and Markov-switching models, but also includes Flexible Least Squares. The second and third chapters estimate already existing models on Central- and Eastern European (CEE) countries’ data which – to our knowledge – has never been done before. The fourth chapter synthesizes and extends the estimation of the time varying savings-retention coefficient to a worldwide database, while also introducing a modified model, and comparing the estimated results to other existing financial openness measures

Conflict Types in Hungarian Film History

The article introduces the collective research project entitled The Social History of Hungarian Cinema, 1931–2015, executed by the staff of Film Studies Department Eötvös Loránd University. This data-driven research aims to examine how and why Hungarian films have changed over time. Using the case study of conflict types in the plots of Hungarian films this study discusses the methodological problems of longitudinal explanations of change in Hungarian film history (periodization and dividing film between genre-based film and auteur films/art cinema). Based on the analysis of statistics and trends, the study presents the most important types of conflict in Hungarian film history. With respect to the political turning points and the periodization of Hungarian film history, the article states that each of the three broad periods (1931–1944, 1945–1989, 1990–2015) is characterized by its own distinctive set of prominent conflict types. The pre-1945 era is characterized by a massive number of love conflicts, the socialist period by the highest rate of political conflicts (and the lowest rates of love and crime conflicts), and the post-socialist period by a high rate of crime and generational conflicts. Furthermore, by analysing the connections between conflict types and genres, the study reveals recurring patterns and trends of shorter periods: it shows how the range of conflicts narrowed considerably over the 1970s and discusses the extent to which this is related to the dominance of auteur films in the era

A new approach of analyzing GRB light curves

We estimated the Txx quantiles of the cumulative GRB light curves using our recalculated background. The basic information of the light curves was extracted by multivariate statistical methods. The possible classes of the light curves are also briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure