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

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Project updates

Preferences associating school performance

Success in life is determined to a large extent by school performance. Researchers of the EdEN H2020 project attempt to explain school performance by certain aspects of students’ choices in university classrooms. In this experimental research, time, risk, social preferences and competitive preferences as well as cognitive abilities of students were measured in a university classroom. Researchers were looking for associations between these and two important academic outcomes: exam results and GPA. Read more on the results in the the publication: Daniel Horn, Hubert Janos Kiss: Which preferences associate with school performance?—Lessons from an exploratory study with university students

EdEN – Education Economics Network (2016—2018) supported by the European Union’s H2020 programme, Partners: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universiteit Maastricht, Politecnico Milano

Health and population - new reserach area

Aniko Bíro, senior research fellow of the Institute of Economics, received a five year grant from the Academy of Sciences to establish a research group that will investigate links between health, health care, demography and socio-economic conditions. The research will focus on Hungary, and is expected to shed light on potential policies to improve population health and economic activity. This focus of the research will be complemented with research projects using international data, conducted in international collaborations.

The three main topics of the work are: 1) infant health and maternity; 2) health and patient pathways during active ages; 3) health and economic activity at older ages.

The overarching research agenda of the Health and Population group and the focus on the social determinants of health will be unique in Hungary. Apart from answering major, policy relevant questions related to health and population, another important contribution of the research group will be the creation and maintenance of a uniquely rich set of individual level data that establish the opportunity to analyse the socio-economic aspects of health in Hungary. At the same time, the research will push forward the frontiers of microeconometric, and specifically, health econometric methods. Learn more about the principal researcher
Momentum Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, July 2018 — June 2023

Bee keeping, green roofs and other nature based technologies at urban areas

Bee keeping at the world’s largest car engine factory, created “New Lake Landscapes” in place of a former open-cast mine, regeneration and cleaning-up rivers surrounding the city, these are but a few examples how cities tackle societal challenges such as climate change, human health and inclusive societies by using natural based solutions. On the website of this four years project the six partner cities ─ Barcelona, Győr, Leipzig, Malmö, Newcastle and Utrecht ─ explain their responses to their own challenges, be it heat stress or flood risk due to climate change, inclusive governance or coastal resilience. Read more about the stories of the cities or search on the Urban Natural Atlas.

Naturvation ─ NATure—based URban innoVATION (2016—2020) supported by the European Union’s H2020 programme, Partners: Central European University, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungary, City of Utrecht, Durham University, Ecologic Institute, Berlin, ENT Barcelona, Grimma, Germany, ICLEI Europe — Local Governments for Sustainability, Leibniz Institut für Länderkunde, Lund University, Malmö City, Newcastle City Council, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Utrecht University

Publication highlights

Bakucs Lajos Zoltán ─ Fertő Imre ─ Varga Ágnes ─ Benedek Zsófia: Impact of European Union development subsidies on Hungarian regions. European Planning Studies Vol. 26. No. 6. 2018. p. 1121—1136.

Since the collapse of the communist system, regional inequalities have increased in Central European Countries. This paper describes an assessment of the impacts of regional development programmes on the development of Hungarian regions at a highly disaggregated level between 2002 and 2008. We construct a multi-dimensional composite indicator to estimate the overall development of rural regions and capture social, economic and environmental dimensions. Read more

 

Biró Péter ─ Kern, Walter ─ Paulusma, Daniäl ─ Wojuteczky Péter: The stable fixtures problem with payments. Games and Economic Behavior Vol. 108. 2018. p. 245—268.

We consider multiple partners matching games, where G is a graph with an integer vertex capacity function b and an edge weighting w. If G is bipartite, these games are called multiple partners assignment games. We give a polynomial-time algorithm that either finds that a given multiple partners matching game has no stable solution, or obtains a stable solution. Read more

 

Hajdu Tamás ─ Hajdu Gábor: Smoking ban and health at birth: evidence from Hungary. Economics and Human Biology Vol.30. 2018. p. 37—47.

In 2012, smoking restrictions were extended to hospitality venues in Hungary. Women working in bars and restaurants were primarily affected by the intervention. In this research, we analyze the effect of this smoking ban on the outcomes of their pregnancies. Using individual live birth, fetal loss, and infant mortality registry data, we examine the probability of live birth, indicators of health at birth, and the probability of death in the first year of life. Read more

 

Sass Magdolna — Gál Zoltán — Juhász Bálint: The impact of FDI on host countries: the analysis of selected service industries in the Visegrad countries. Post-Communist Economies, Vol. 30. No. 5. 2018. pp. 652-674.

Foreign direct investments are substantial in the services sector in the Visegrad countries. In this article, we analyse the impact of FDI on the host economy in four selected service industries in two areas: export and employment. FDI in the four selected service industries differ in terms of their vertical or horizontal nature: in business services FDI is predominantly vertical; in financial services and telecommunications it is predominantly horizontal; while in computer-related service activities both types can be found. According to our results, the impact on the host economy differs in the four service industries. Read more

Szunomár Ágnes – Mccaleb, Agnieszka – Chen, Xin: Economic Relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe: trade and Investment Issues. In: Weiqing, Song (ed.): China's relations with Central and Eastern Europe: from "old comrades" to new partners. London: Routledge, 2018. pp. 48-65.

The economic expansion of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of the most spectacular events of today’s global economy, into which the PRC is increasingly integrated through foreign direct investments (FDI) and rising trade flows. While Chinese companies mainly focus on building strong economic ties with the developing world, where they search for markets and natural resources, the developed economies of Europe have also recently become important targets, offering markets for Chinese products and assets that Chinese companies lack.

 More selected publications >>>

Recent conference presentations

Attila Havas: The relevance of foresight for supporting research infrastructure policies

Investments in research infrastructures (RIs) are costly, and thus would require thorough and transparent decision - preparatory processes.  Yet, in most countries RI policies are devised behind closed doors, by a handful of decision-makers. The paper first provides a brief overview of RI policy-setting processes in ten Central and South-East European countries and then considers the benefits of foresight for RI development policies. Its analytical framework is guided by evolutionary economics of innovation and the theory of participatory decision-preparation processes, in particular foresight. Read the paper

6th International Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) – Future in the Making, Brussels, 4—5 June 2018

Kerényi Ádám: The FinTech challenge: digital innovations from post-communist EU member countries

Financial Technology is a broad concept. Financial Technology is one of the most innovative, increasingly important and potentially the most rapid change in financial services revolutionizing the way financial services firms operate and transforming debt and equity markets, payments, credit assessment, regulatory compliance, personal finance and many other facets of financial services. Competition in the Fintech arena is developing at the global level. I focus on the CEE and Baltic regions. According to recent reports the estimated size of the Fintech market across the 11 CEE and Baltic post-communist EU member countries is more than 2 billion euros. Open the presentation

Summer Academy 2018: Firm Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe, Tutzing 11—13 June 2018

Upcoming events

29—30 November Budapest, 4th The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism (SVOC) – Uneven Development, Inequalities and the State,

Deadline for abstract submission: July 31, 2018

The SVOC2018 conference is organized by the Institute of World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Center for European Neighborhood Studies, Central European University.

Editor: Zsuzsa Balabán

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