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Abstract
This study focuses on the level of interdependence across the Central and Eastern European (CEE) foreign exchange markets (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Croatia) from September 2008 to September 2017, using the return spillover measure proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009; 2012). We mainly find a bidirectional volatility spillover among these assets and the cross-market linkages in the CEE region have become stronger over time. Furthermore, the Czech exchange market has a significant influence on the rest of the foreign exchange markets. The total spillover remained very high over the periods 2010–2012 and 2015–2017, despite the noteworthy fluctuations in other periods. These results would also be useful for portfolio managers, policy makers and speculative traders to develop exploitable strategies, by providing knowledge of the transmission mechanisms of the volatility of foreign exchange markets. The results may support the distribution of assets in a financial portfolio, especially after financial integration.
Abstract
The high rate of increase of ruling politicians' wealth has been empirically proven many times. However, in the literature it is almost always assumed that politicians grew rich faster due to political rent-seeking or corruption. The aim of this article is to discuss the assumption whether corruption and rent-seeking is indeed the only possible cause, and to present empirical findings undermining the assumption. The results of the analysis of levels and rate of growth of Polish politicians' wealth clearly show that the other explanation is the selection of people exercising authority. Based on statistical analysis of 2024 asset declarations of 689 councillors from Polish voivodeship assemblies from two terms in the period of 2010–2018, the paper demonstrates that the different rates of changes of the value of assets of coalition and opposition councillors are at least partly the effect of the selection bias.
The paper applies a variant of the gravity model to test whether there is a positive link between the size of trade flows and the extent to which they follow the pattern of comparative advantage. Using UNCTAD's 2016 trade data for every country in the world, and 255 merchandise items, we show that countries trading more with each other tend to follow the patterns of comparative advantages more than countries with smaller mutual trade flows. While smaller trade flows can be easily influenced by business decisions of individual companies or one-off trade contracts going against trade pattern predictions, this is not the case with larger flows. We also find signs that holding trade volume constant, more distant countries trade less than geographically proximate countries, in line with predictions from comparative advantage. The results are valid for the whole database of all country pairs in world trade, but the goodness of fit increases with the number of items these country pairs trade in. The paper is the first insight into the topic and can be expanded to a higher level of disaggregation and more variables in future research.
The operations of the cooperative organization are an actively debated issue. The efficiency and viability of this organizational form still pose many unanswered questions. The literature is not unequivocal in evaluating the merits and drawbacks of this organization. This article provides empirical evidence from research about cooperatives covering three countries (Canada, France and Hungary) and tests theoretical hypotheses in the framework of organizational economics and cooperative theory. The findings point towards the positive influence of the social environment and cooperative values on organizational choice. The results prove the continued relevance of this type of organization in the 21st century in agriculture in all three researched countries.
Croatia is faced with a low response to cancer-screening programs, especially the national cervical cancer screening program, which ultimately resulted in its suspension. If judged solely on the basis of revealed preferences, such a poor response would imply that the population assigns a low social value to preventive screening programs. However, the question arises as to whether revealed preferences (the population's response), in the case of the absence of response to a preventive program, provide insight into its value (utility). Therefore, the objective of this paper is to determine the value that respondents assign to different attributes of cervical screening and, in a broader sense, to decide whether the best-worst scaling (BWS) approach is appropriate for determining the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for public health programs. The MWTP for certain attributes of cervical cancer screening is derived from the results of a BWS study conducted in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia. The cost function was estimated by regressing the conditional logit coefficients (level of utility) of three levels of the cost attribute on its corresponding values, that is, the hypothetical price. Because the sum of the MWTP corresponds with the market price of a gynecological examination in private practice, we conclude that the results obtained by the BWS confirm the revealed preferences (the market value of the service).
The paper analyses the impact of the simultaneous occurrence of external debt and capital flight on economic policy effectiveness in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) in sub-Saharan Africa, employing the Panel-Corrected Standard Error regression model for the period 1990 to 2015. The empirical results reveal that both monetary and fiscal policies in the region had been undermined in achieving their intended purposes because of increasing capital flight and external debt. Also, the concurrent occurrence of capital flight and external debt has been a hindrance to progress on the continent, particularly by undermining domestic investment. These results call for more practical measures in addressing the issues of foreign debt and capital flight, given the critical importance of domestic private investment for both short- and long-run growth.
The focus of our research is the internationalisation of the small-medium size family firms in Hungary, with particular attention to the effect of generational change on internationalisation. Our examination is based on interviews with the current management of six family firms from different industries. We had two research propositions: First, we analysed if and how successors in the family businesses were more open to the internationalisation of the company. Our results provide insights reflecting that the predecessors are usually quite open, and successors are not always as open when they assume control over the company, unlike the existing internationalisation patterns of family firms would suggest. Potential explanations reveal related characteristics of the Central-Eastern European (CEE) region. Secondly, in terms of how and why the leadership style and approach of the predecessors affect the internationalisation of family firms, our findings from different cases vary. The historical and cultural background of the family firms' founders and early-generation successors exert notable influence on the internationalisation process, while the role of predecessors' personal characteristics may not be as strong a driver of internationalisation as previously suggested. The management implications of our findings suggest that the Hungarian family firms show regional patterns in terms of their internationalisation, and generic approaches to generational change and succession may not explain the process as much as extant literature on international family business suggests.
Editor's Note: This essay paper of Professor Kornai with an unusually provoking title consists of two parts. Part I is the slightly edited, non-abridged version of his writing published as an oped in The Financial Times (FT) on 11 July 2019, the world's leading global business publication (Kornai 2019a). Subsequently, the full text of this paper was published in the Hungarian weekly magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature; Kornai 2019b), which in turn generated a number of commenting articles published in the same weekly. Still in the month of July, the original essay was translated into Chinese by a Hong Kong newspaper and into Vietnamese. An influential multilingual Chinese newspaper gave an extensive summary of the FT essay (Street 2019). The latter one, according to our best knowledge, was disseminated only on the internet. Part II is the translated and slightly edited version of Kornai's second article, published in September this year on the same topic (Kornai 2019c). In this second essay he responded to his critiques both in Hungary and world-wide. This piece was published in its original form in Hungarian by the previous mentioned Hungarian weekly. 1 We, the Editors of Acta Oeconomica, are proud to publish the complete English translation of this second essay first time. We thank for the opportunity given to us by Professor Kornai to publish the Frankenstein-papers in an integrated form, together with all the necessary bibliographic references.
This paper addresses the hottest potato of economics today, namely why the profession seems to have been lulled into a sense of false security in spite of flourishing economic models as well as subfield-knowledge in various disciplines? The embarrassing question of the Queen of England ‘why did nobody see the crisis of 2008 coming’ emblematically signalled the failure of the collective imagination of the entire profession to understand the system and its emerging patterns. The present paper can be seen therefore as a clarion call for grounding a shift towards an economics barded with the lessons learnt in complexity science in shaping modern governance.
Have we reached the point where more spending on health care and other forms of social protection is not producing better health as measured by reductions in population mortality? Drawing on two decades of research and mortality statistics (1995–2015) for 17 OECD countries, our analysis confirms and builds on the observed relationship between the returns and investments in health and social welfare spending. First, the results suggest that there is a differential effect of socioeconomic, lifestyle and demography variables on total and cause-specific mortality rates. Second, the basic premise of an association between health care expenditure and mortality rates is reinforced in models that take into account public-only health expenditure and its impact on older age groups. Third, a strong protective effect of government-sponsored welfare expenditure on infant mortality was observed. This effect is weaker on other causes of death and suggests that older individuals, in this sample of developed countries, may have reached a stage of the epidemiological transition in which health improvement is indifferent to government assistance and depends largely on behavioural change.
