Can the state replace private capital investors? Public financing of venture capital in Hungary

It is generally accepted that venture capital exerts a positive influence on economic development, and Hungarian economic policy, too, regards it as a means to accelerate economic growth, enhance the export capacity of companies, improve employment, increase tax revenues, investments and research and development expenditures, that is, to boost the overall competitiveness of the country. Although Hungary boasts an advanced venture capital industry in regional comparison, the capital supply of small/startup companies especially is still unresolved. The successive Hungarian governments having come to power since the change of the economic and political regime declared almost without exception the importance of venture capital, and made efforts to contribute to raising its supply. These efforts, however, have been rather ineffective due to their almost exclusive reliance on direct state intervention and disregard for the much more successful western solutions stimulating private sector venture capital investors. The present paper first describes the reasons, areas, direct and indirect forms of state intervention in the venture capital industry. Subsequently, it surveys its specific reasons and practice so far on the Hungarian venture capital market. It highlights the essential difference in approach reflected by the Hungarian and the western experiences, respectively, and makes a proposal as to how the state could promote the development of the venture capital market more effectively and in a more market-oriented way, with special regard to Hungary’s prospective accession to the European Union in 2004. Accordingly, the state should avoid direct capital investment in companies, bypassing the private sector; it should supplement the funds of private investors as co-financier, and control co-operation with them by reducing the risks and increasing the profits associated with investments enjoying state preference for private investors. This would allow the state to realise its economy and venture capital industry development objectives simultaneously.venture capital, public policy

From calls to communities: a model for time varying social networks

Social interactions vary in time and appear to be driven by intrinsic mechanisms, which in turn shape the emerging structure of the social network. Large-scale empirical observations of social interaction structure have become possible only recently, and modelling their dynamics is an actual challenge. Here we propose a temporal network model which builds on the framework of activity-driven time-varying networks with memory. The model also integrates key mechanisms that drive the formation of social ties - social reinforcement, focal closure and cyclic closure, which have been shown to give rise to community structure and the global connectedness of the network. We compare the proposed model with a real-world time-varying network of mobile phone communication and show that they share several characteristics from heterogeneous degrees and weights to rich community structure. Further, the strong and weak ties that emerge from the model follow similar weight-topology correlations as real-world social networks, including the role of weak ties.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Application of Finite Strain Landau Theory To High Pressure Phase Transitions

In this paper we explain how to set up what is in fact the only possible consistent construction scheme for a Landau theory of high pressure phase transitions that systematically allows to take into account elastic nonlinearities. We also show how to incorporate available information on the pressure dependence of elastic constants taken from experiment or simulation. We apply our new theory to the example of the high pressure cubic-tetragonal phase transition in Strontium Titanate, a model perovskite that has played a central role in the development of the theory of structural phase transitions. Armed with pressure dependent elastic constants calculated by density functional theory, we give a both qualitatively as well as quantitatively satisfying description of recent high precision experimental data. Our nonlinear theory also allows to predict a number of additional elastic transition anomalies that are accessible to experiment.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Graph-based real-time fault diagnostics

A real-time fault detection and diagnosis capability is absolutely crucial in the design of large-scale space systems. Some of the existing AI-based fault diagnostic techniques like expert systems and qualitative modelling are frequently ill-suited for this purpose. Expert systems are often inadequately structured, difficult to validate and suffer from knowledge acquisition bottlenecks. Qualitative modelling techniques sometimes generate a large number of failure source alternatives, thus hampering speedy diagnosis. In this paper we present a graph-based technique which is well suited for real-time fault diagnosis, structured knowledge representation and acquisition and testing and validation. A Hierarchical Fault Model of the system to be diagnosed is developed. At each level of hierarchy, there exist fault propagation digraphs denoting causal relations between failure modes of subsystems. The edges of such a digraph are weighted with fault propagation time intervals. Efficient and restartable graph algorithms are used for on-line speedy identification of failure source components

Fogyasztóvédelmi büntetőjog = Consumer Protection in the Criminal Law

1. A fogyasztóvédelem büntetőjogi aspektusairól való gondolkodás megjelent a hazai szakirodalomban. 2. A büntetőjogi ítélkezés elemzése rávilágított több szakmailag kifogásolható gyakorlatra, amelyet meg kell változtatni. 3. A kutatás révén bizonyíthatóvá vált a jogalkotási szükséglet is. 4. A fogyasztóvédelemmel foglalkozó (nem büntetőjogi) hatóságok számára kimutathatóvá vált, hogy tevékenységük során megjelennek büntetőjogi relevanciával bíró esetek, ezeket fel kell ismerniük és meg kell tenniük a szükséges intézkedéseket. 5. A Btk. vonatkozó tényállásait érintően (rossz minőségű termék forgalomba hozatala, minőség hamis tanúsítása, visszaélés ártalmas közfogyasztási cikkel, áru hamis megjelölése, fogyasztó megtévesztése) teljes dogmatikai elemzésre és a joggyakorlat monitorozására is sor került. | 1. The topic of consumer protection via criminal law has appeared in the Hungarian literature. 2. The analysis of the closed criminal cases has proven that in certain cases, the interpretation and the application of the Criminal Code suffer in deficits and discrepancy. 3. The need for legislation in this field is also proven. 4. It has been shown that there are cases with criminal law relevancy even in the practice of non-investigative authorities (administrative authorities of consumer protection), therefore these authorities shall be aware of this possibility and shall make the necessary steps. 5. The offences laid down in the Criminal Code (Btk.) are deeply analysed from the points of view of the dogmatic structures and of the concerned jurisdiction, as well

Kinetic and kinematic examination of arm coordination in fixed position crawl swimming

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A magyar kockázati- és magántőke-ágazat forrásellátása nemzetközi összehasonlításban = Sources of funds in the Hungarian venture capital and private equity industry in international perspective

A kutatás célja a magyarországi cégek kockázati- és magántőke-finanszírozását biztosító befektetők forrásainak vizsgálata volt. Mivel a hazai befektetéseket végző alapok szinte kivétel nélkül regionális szinten működnek, a kutatás középpontjába a közép-kelet-európai regionális alapok tőkeellátásának vizsgálata került. Míg a válságot megelőző néhány évben a térség a befektetők egyik kedvelt célpontjává vált, addig a válság globálissá válásával a kockázatok növekedése, a hitelek megdrágulása, s a régióbeli országok növekedési ütemének visszaesése a befektetők szinte teljes elfordulását okozta az itteni piacoktól. A válság elriasztotta a csak nemrégiben megjelent globális befektetőket, s megnehezítette új magántőke-alapok felállítását is. Mivel a költségvetési forrásokból dolgozó hazai állami kockázatitőke-társaságok tőkéje is lényegében elfogyott, az évtized végén új helyzetet teremtett, hogy az EU JEREMIE-programja keretében a hazai magánszektorbeli alapkezelők közösségi forrásokra pályázhattak fiatal innovatív cégekbe történő befektetéseikhez. | The research analyzed the sources of funds’ provision on a detailed survey of the five years’ tendencies of the venture capital and private equity (PE) industry in the Central and East European (CEE) region, with a special emphasize on Hungary. Given that PE has come to the CEE region almost exclusively from foreign sources, changes in the volume of capital available for PE investments were influenced primarily by getting involved the region into the global flow of capital. While in the years preceding the crisis the CEE region became a favoured target of investors, the increasing risks, the slow-down of the pace of growth of the countries within the region and the increasingly expensive loans have reduced investors’ interest in the region. Due to the fall in savings managed by institutional investors, the number and capital of new regional funds committed to investing in the region considerably decreased as a whole. However, small-scale investments into companies in an early phase in their life are expected to intensify as soon as the JEREMIE-program, linking the EU funds with the capital of private sector investors, actually starts up