Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence

Read the newletter pdf

Subscibe/unsubscribe: balaban.zsuzsa@krtk.mta.hu

Project updates

COMPETE International comparison of product supply chains in the agro-food sector (2012-2015), FP7
Partners: Leibniz-Institut für Agrarentwicklung in Transformationsökonomien (IAMO) (Germany) (Coordinator) and 15 participants , See the list of participants here: http://www.compete-project.eu/consortium.html

The research group of COMPETE has recently held the final consultation workshop on 22nd September in Brussels. Please find the presentation on the main findings of the research here.
Visit the project’s website. Publications of the project.

CrESSI Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation (2014-2018), FP7
Partners: University of Oxford (Coordinator) (UK), Austrian Institute of Technology (Austria) Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), Università di Pavia (Italy), Universität Greifswald (Germany), Universität Heidelberg (Germany), University of Tampere (Finland)

Several project members attended the International Social Innovation Conference in York in September. Senior research fellow of CERS HAS, Attila Havas won the best paper award in the track „Economic underpinnings of social innovation” with his paper „Social innovation and theories of innovation in various economics paradigms”.
See the presentation.
Visit the project’s website.

Mapping out vulnerable sectors in the Eastern Partnership countries (2015-2016), Visegrad Fund
Partners: Center for Social and Economic Research Belarus (Belarus), Institute for Development and Social Activities (Moldova), Center for Social and Economic Research (Poland), Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (Ukraine), Slovak Foreign Policy Association (Slovakia)

The second workshop of the project was held in Chișinău in September, co-organized by the Institute for Development and Social Activities, Moldova. The first findings of the Machine Industry Report on Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova was presented during the event.
Read executive summary. Website of the project.

EdEN Education Economics Network (coordinator) (2016-2018), H2020
Partners: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (belgium), Universiteit Maastricht (The Netherlands), Politecnico Milano (Italy)

Daniel Horn’s proposal won a 36 months grant in Horizon 2020. Horn will coordinate the project which marks the start of an enhanced cooperation in the field of education economics between three top ranked economics of education research groups in EU-15 and the one of the Institute of Economics CERS-HAS. The project is at the stage of grant agreement preparation and aims to start in January 2016.

Publication highlights

Havas A.: Types of knowledge and diversity of business-academia collaborations: implications for measurement and policy. Triple Helix Vol. 2. No. 1. 2015. Paper 12. 26 p.
Analysis of business-academia (B-A) collaborations typically relies on a single method, addressing one or two major research questions. In contrast, this article tackles both research and development (R&D) and innovation collaborations among businesses and academia relying on information using multiple methods and multiple sources of information to offer insights on dynamics and qualitative features of these co-operation processes. Interviews conducted in Hungary—in line with other research findings—have also confirmed that (i) motivations, incentives for, and norms of conducting R&D and innovation activities diametrically differ in business and academia; and (ii) different types of firms have different needs. See more

Kovács K.: Advancing marginalisation of Roma and forms of segregation in East Central Europe. Local Economy, 30. 2015. (7) p. 1-17.
The thematic focus of this article is on school segregation and its relationship to residential segregation as manifested in six villages and two towns in adjacent lagging regions of Hungary and Slovakia. The strong correlation of the two was evident in village ghettos but turned out not to be straightforward in mixed communities where a ghetto school can be created through ‘white flight’ of the non-Roma children even if the proportion of Roma in the community is low. See more

López-Pérez, R. - Pintér Á. - Kiss H. J.: Does payoff equity facilitate coordination?: A test of Schelling's conjecture. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Vol. 117. 2015. p. 209-222.
Starting from Schelling (1960), several game theorists have conjectured that payoff equity might facilitate coordination in normal-form games with multiple equilibria – the more equitable equilibrium might be selected either because fairness makes it focal or because many individuals dislike payoff inequities, as abundant experimental evidence suggests. In this line, we propose a selection principle called Equity (EQ), which selects the equilibrium in pure strategies minimizing the difference between the highest and smallest money payoff, if only one such equilibrium exists. See more

Szalavetz A.: Upgrading and subsidiary autonomy: Experience of Hungarian manufacturing companies. Japanese Journal of Comparative Economics Vol. 52. No. 2. 2015. p. 1-19.
This paper examines the patterns of subsidiary autonomy at the organizational periphery: at multinational companies’ (MNCs) manufacturing subsidiaries in Hungary. It investigates the impact of upgrading on subsidiary autonomy. Our case study-based investigation (27 in-depth interviews at 14 manufacturing subsidiaries) integrates three previously isolated lines of research: 1) subsidiary upgrading, 2) subsidiary autonomy and 3) headquarters’ role in MNCs. See more

Varró K. – Faragó L.: The politics of spatial policy and governance in post-1990 Hungary. The interplay between European and national discourses of space. European Planning Studies, Vol.23. 2015. p. 1-22.
There is now a wealth of literature discussing how regional development and spatial planning practices in Central Eastern Europe have been shaped through the alignment with EU policy frameworks. However, scholars have tended to study governance dynamics in terms of adaptation and learning, paying thus little attention to how spatial policy change is inherently interlinked with the political contestation of nation-state spaces. This paper proposes to address this lack by combining insights from political economic work on state spatial restructuring and discourse theory. See more

See more publications >>>

Recent conference presentations

Czirfusz M.: The scalar regime of workfare in post-crisis Hungary
Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography: Mapping Economies in Transformation, 19–22 August 2015, Oxford, Organiser: University of Oxford

Márton Czirfusz presented his paper in the ‘Work Economies’ theme. His argument was that economic crisis has rewritten geographies of work in Hungary, and one of the policy reactions has been the roll-out of the workfare state and especially its obligatory employment part starting in 2011. The paper argued that this new Hungarian workfare regime is not an aspatial phenomenon, but a deeply spatial one which has changed the scalar regulation of labour and has reproduced uneven geographies of capitalism. Building on official statistical data about participants in the nationally-funded workfare programme (3.8% of employment in 2013), and on the analysis of policy documents, it was shown how these policies re-arrange scalar hierarchies. Participation at the conference was made available by the Young Researchers’ Travel Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. See presentation

Lovász A.: Does Subsidized Childcare Matter for Maternal Labor Supply? A Credible Cutoff-Based Estimate at a Policy-Relevant Point
14th IZA/SOLE Transatlantic Meeting of Labor Economists, 2-5 July, Inning, Organiser: The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Research fellow Anna Lovász presented her paper on Childcare Availability and Maternal Labor Supply at the 14th IZA/SOLE Transatlantic Meeting of Labor Economists. The conference provided young researchers the opportunity to receive valuable feedback on their research from top senior researchers in the field and to expand their international network. See paper

Ozsvald É. – Szanyi M.: Partial state ownership in CEE companies and financial institutions
The 1st World Congress of Comparative Economics, 25-27 June 2015, Rome, Organisers: The European Association for Comparative Economic Studies (EACES), The Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES), The Japanese Association for Comparative Economic Studies (JACES), The Korean Association for Comparative Economic Studies (KACES)

The presentation covers one part of a broader research in the field of the second-generation thinking on the varieties of capitalism approach to the classifications of the models of contemporary capitalism. Countries belonging to the CEE group are rightly distinguished from other models of market economies and the behaviour of the state as an owner of assets contributes to the idiosyncrasies of individual countries. The presentation focuses on a comparative analysis of state asset management policies in Hungary and Poland. First it shows how different privatization methods had led to the different degrees of the power and influence of the interest groups in the the two countries. The second part explores the motives behind the post-2008 developments in the renationalization drive in Hungary and the continuation of privatization cum strengthening state asset management in Poland. See presentation

Upcoming events

12 November Economics with policy – international seminar series, Budapest, IE CERS-HAS
Luca David Opromolla /Banco de Portugal/: Productivity and Organization in Portuguese Firms

26-27 November The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism (SVOC), Budapest, IWE CERS-HAS, CEU

30 November – 1 December Networks, Complexity, and Economic Development, Budapest, CERS HAS