Education 2.0: Exploring the challenges of Corvinus University in the long tail economy of global higher education

Our basic storyline is how the business and economics higher education landscape has changed with the introduction of the Bologna programs. We borrowed the fashionable long tail concept from e-business, and used it for modeling the new landscape of internationalization of universities. Internationalization, mobility, and the appearance of the internet generation at the gates of our universities in our opinion has brought us to a new e-era which, appropriately to our web analogies we might as well call Education 2.0.In our paper first we show the characteristics of the long tail model of the Bologna-based European higher education and potential messages for strategy making in this environment. We illustrate that benchmarking university strategies situated in the head of the long tail model will not always provide strategic guidance for universities sitting in the tail. For underlining some key concerns in the Hungarian niche, we used Corvinus University as a case study to illustrate some untapped challenges of the Hungarian Bologna reform. We explored three areas which are crucial elements of the “tail” strategy in our opinion: a) the influence of state regulation, b) social situations and impacts and c) internal university capabilities

Contradictions inherent in the management of natural and industrial disasters

These days people keep wondering whether the world is more dangerous now than it was before. Do natural disasters really happen more frequently or is it just that the damage they cause that has become greater? The situation is not quite clear. As a result of the globalizing world and advanced communication infrastructure, the number of known / reported catastrophes is relatively high, but that does not necessarily mean there has been an actual increase in frequency. The red mud spill in Hungary was a special combination of industrial and natural disasters. This is one of the reasons why it is very hard to pinpoint who is responsible for the event. Natural disasters tend to raise questions about responsibility that are different from those concerning industrial catastrophes. Interestingly enough, however, nature often plays an important role in industrial disasters. The present article is concerned with how the issues of responsibility are handled in the case of industrial disasters

The impact of EU-accession on farming and agricultural employment in Cluj County

This paper reveals some consequences of Romania’s accession to the EU on farming and agricultural employment in Cluj County. EU15 countries have a different farm structure and a higher agricultural labour productivity than Romania and the Common Agricultural Policy in its present form responds primarily to their needs. Based on the interviews carried out in 2005 and in 2009 with farmers and experts from Cluj County, the paper presents the expectations towards EU accession as well as its short-term effects. Results of the interviews suggest that, in Cluj County, EU-accession leads to the disappearance of semi-subsistence farms and to the decrease of the number of agricultural workers. Farmers are still not sufficiently informed about CAP and the complexity of the administrative procedures, and the lack of professionalism of agency staff and the delays of payments caused many disappointments in the first two years after EU accession.EU-accession of Romania, Common Agricultural Policy, rural employment, agricultural employment

Some aspects of European climate policy

Being heavily energy dependent, it is not much of a surprise that Europe pays special attention to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Each one of the ten new member states is characterized by relatively low per capita energy consumption and relatively low energy efficiency, and the share of renewables in their energy mix tends to be low, too. The paper examines the problem, when the policy measures create a decrease in environmental capital instead of an increase. In this case it hardly seems justified to talk about environmental protection. The authors describe a case of a rapeseed oil mill which would not be of too much interest on its own but given that almost all similar plants went bankrupt, there are some important lessons to learn from its survival. The enterprise the authors examined aimed at establishing a micro-regional network. They completed a brown-field development to establish a small plant on the premises of a former large agricultural cooperative. By partnering with the former employees and suppliers of the sometime cooperative, they enjoyed some benefits which all the other green-field businesses focusing on fuel production could not. The project improved food security, energy security and population retention as well

Does Foreign Direct Investment Transfer Technology Across Borders? A Reexamination

Reexamining foreign direct investment (FDI) as a potential channel for knowledge diffusion -- based on industry data from seventeen OECD countries during the period 1973-2000 -- we find that FDI-receiving countries benefit strongly from FDI-related knowledge spillovers. We do not find evidence for positive FDI-related technology sourcing effects. Instead, our results suggest that outward FDI might have negative effects on the output of the FDI-sending country.foreign direct investment, knowledge spillovers

Does Foreign Direct Investment Transfer Technology Across Borders? A Reexamination

Reexamining foreign direct investment (FDI) as a potential channel for knowledge diffusion - based on industry data from seventeen OECD countries during the period 1973-2000 - we find that FDI-receiving countries benefit strongly from FDI-related knowledge spillovers. We do not find evidence for positive FDI-related technology sourcing effects. Instead, our results suggest that outward FDI might have negative effects on the output of the FDI- sending country. --foreign direct investment,knowledge spillovers

The Relationship between Alternative Unemployment Indicators and Agriculture in the Northern Great Plain

By adapting the alternative unemployment indicators series (U1-U6), which has long been in use in the United States and in many European countries, the authors endeavour to create their own indicators series using the Hungarian national statistical database as a basis to evaluate the results. This is performed both on the national and regional levels, meaning the socially and economically disadvantaged Northern Great Plain Region which is compared with the developed Western Transdanubian Region. The authors also attempt to establish a relationship between problems caused by unemployment in the Eastern part of the country and agriculture.measurement of unemployment, alternative unemployment indicators, Hungary, Northern Great Plain, Western Transdanubia, agriculture., Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Photo-Met: a non-parametric method for estimating stellar metallicity from photometric observations

Getting spectra at good signal-to-noise ratios takes orders of magnitudes more time than photometric observations. Building on the technique developed for photometric redshift estimation of galaxies, we develop and demonstrate a non-parametric photometric method for estimating the chemical composition of galactic stars. We investigate the efficiency of our method using spectroscopically determined stellar metallicities from SDSS DR7. The technique is generic in the sense that it is not restricted to certain stellar types or stellar parameter ranges and makes it possible to obtain metallicities and error estimates for a much larger sample than spectroscopic surveys would allow. We find that our method performs well, especially for brighter stars and higher metallicities and, in contrast to many other techniques, we are able to reliably estimate the error of the predicted metallicities.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A

Effect of wall thickness on the solar gain

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a production frontier approach

The growth experience of virtually all but the very rich countries is best explained as a combination of high and low growth episodes. Therefore, there is a need to under- stand the sources of growth during high and low growth regimes and in particular the influences as growth regimes change. This paper approaches the issue by combining the derivation of structural breaks in economic growth with nonparametric growth accounting that enables the decomposition of productivity changes into technologi- cal and effciency changes. The results show that even in the medium run growth rate changes are mainly the result of productivity changes whereas factor accumula- tion plays only a minor role. Except for high income countries productivity changes usually represent effciency changes. A comparison of growth take-offs and growth collapses reveals that factor accumulation is even less important in periods of acceler- ating growth