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Business and Economics
The idea of symbolic consumption is based on the assumption that consumption is more than just functional problem solving: products and brands have significant meanings; therefore, they can be utilized as symbols in the cultural ecosystem. However, grasping the meaning of a specific brand can be confusing because it would presume knowledge about the brand as a symbol shared by the customers. We review the contradicting findings in the literature about the symbolic meaning of brands, and we initiate a new reference point in order to dissolve the above mentioned conflict. According to our understanding, the symbolic meaning of a brand shall be examined in the context of specific brand communities and not in general. We suggest that limiting the scope of research to brands with brand communities resolves several limitations of symbolic consumption studies focusing on general issues. Our theoretical model distinguishes the different types of brand communities based on their main cohesive force. In the model, at one end we find image based brand communities where the brand image is the main cohesive force, while at the other end we find brand-subcultures where the members are more committed to each other than to the brand.
Much empirical research has been carried out to test the presence of contagion in European sovereign debt crisis since the beginning of 2010. In this paper I will consider contagion as a change in the transmission mechanism of shock, illustrating co-movement among the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) markets of seven European countries and the UK from November 2008 up until June 2013. By examining daily pricing data of the five-year sovereign CDS contracts of these countries, I found a large increase in the volatility in the period of crisis, and hence a correlation test is invalid, but parametric method with GARCH residual time series and quantile regression approach are applicable. The first test modelling time series’ residuals by GARCH formula shows no contagion. In the second method, slope equality tests analyse the stability in linear relationship among markets across quantile and find no evidence of contagion. This final result of no contagion during the debt crisis suggests that the reason of the sovereign risk’s propagation is the conventional interdependence among countries, not the greatness of the shock.
Using an updated microsimulation model developed earlier in the Hungarian National Bank, we estimate the macroeconomic, budgetary and labour market effects of government measures relating to taxes, social contributions, social transfers and gross wages since 2010. Compared to other studies, we take into account a more broad scope of measures, e.g. measures affecting gross wages and total labour cost directly. According to our estimations, the increase of the minimum wage and the so-called expected wage have fully compensated the low-income households of 2.3 million people already in the short-run for the loss of net income stemming from personal income tax and social contribution changes (especially for the abolition of tax credit).Taking into account social transfer reforms, the long-term macroeconomic effect of the measures is favourable: the level of employment may increase by approximately 2 percent, steady-state GDP level may go up by 1.5–2 and public deficit may decrease in the long run due to the government measures.
Logistics industry, being the modern industry integrating information, forwarding, warehousing, and transportation, plays an important role in optimizing the industrial structure in regional economic development. There have been many experts and scholars interpreting the relationship between the level of regional economy and logistics industry from the aspect of econometric model. Referring to existing research results, Panel Vector Autoregressive Model and Factor Analysis are applied to study panel data of 5 coastal provinces in past 20 years and construct relevant indicators reflecting logistic competitiveness, the level of regional economy, and degree of openness in order to explore the linkage effect between logistic competitiveness and the level of regional economy. The results suggest that the 5 coastal provinces can merely achieve the long-term and steady development of regional economy by moving towards the linkage development between logistic industry and manufacturing industry.
It is important for Taiwanese policy makers to understand how economic factors affect US tourists’ decision to travel to Taiwan. For the long-run analysis, Johansen’s cointegration test reveals that three cointegration vectors exist among the model variables, indicating a long-run relationship. To conduct a short-run analysis, this paper employs vector auto regression (VAR) to estimate the responses of US tourists in Taiwan to the shocks of changes to personal disposable income, cost of living, and substitute price. The short-run equilibrium adjustment processes are discussed in terms of generalized impulse response. The results show an immediate and significant response of changes in tourist arrivals to their own impacts, changes in the cost of living, and changes in the substitute price. In addition, the price, income, and cross-elasticity of tourism demand are all positive at the beginning of the responses, implying that the tourism products can be attributed to normal and substitute goods.
The present study’s primary objective is to identify contributing factors in selecting and evaluating a seafood supplier within the Taiwanese hospitality industry. It illustrates the application of a multicriteria decision-making process to supplier selection within a service setting where it is less common than in a manufacturing context. To implement the study, a survey instrument was created and submitted to Taiwanese hospitality firms, namely hotels and restaurants, to identify contributing factors in the selection of a seafood supplier within six initial areas concerning food hygiene, stafftraining, crisis management, information technology, competitive ability, and logistics and quality assurance. The analytic hierarchical process (AHP) was then applied to the survey results, and the first- and second-level hierarchical factors were rigorously identified and ranked. These can be regarded as useful benchmarks in identifying and ranking the selection and evaluation of a food supplier within the industry. The present study enhances the understanding of supplier selection in the hospitality industry and provides insights which hospitality firms can apply in managing their supply chains. The managerial and research implications of these findings are discussed.
The paper examines how flows of foreign aid have reacted to events of democratisation in developing countries. Using a panel dataset of 136 aid-receiving countries between 1980 and 2009, aid allocation regressions reveal that Western donors in general have tended to react to visible, major democratic transitions by increasing aid to the partner country, but no significant increases can be identified in the case of countries introducing smaller democratic reforms. The increases in aid flows are not sustained over time, implying that donors do not provide long-term support to nascent democracies. Also, democratisations in Sub-Saharan Africa do not seem to have been rewarded with higher levels of aid.
The main goal of this paper is a quantitative identification of bear market periods during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis in the case of the Visegrad Group stock markets. We analyse four countries, namely Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia and, for comparison, the US stock market. The sample period begins on May1, 2004, and ends on April 30, 2013, i.e. it includes the 2007 US subprime crisis. We use the statistical method of dividing market states into bullish and bearish markets. Our results reveal October 2007–February 2009 as the common downmarket period of the recent global financial crisis, except for Slovakia. It is instructive to formally identify crises, as it enables sensitivity analyses of various relationships and linkages among international stock markets using econometric and statistical tools, with respect to the pre-, post- and crisis periods. Moreover, we investigate the effect of increasing cross-market correlations in the crisis compared to the pre-crisis period, applying both standard contemporaneous correlations and volatility-adjusted correlation coefficients. The results confirm that accommodating heteroskedasticity is critical for detecting contagion across economies. A number of studies document that crossmarket correlations vary over time, thereby making the benefits of international portfolio choice and diversification questionable.
The aim of this study is to apply the stochastic job search framework to the analysis of three transition economies (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic). Two versions of equilibrium unemployment models have been developed resembling Mortensen and Pissarides’ models, namely the dynamic and stochastic models. The dynamic model’s properties were briefly examined by evaluating the Jacobian matrix and plotting the phase plane of the economy. In the primary analysis of the stochastic model, job destruction decisions are endogenous as a response to random productivity changes. A martingale, i.e. a discrete-space version of the geometric Brownian motion with the drift and volatility parameter, was used to enable fluctuation of endogenous variables and to perform numerical simulations. The results are promising, although ambiguous in some points, e.g. the main model-generated time-series are close to the empirical time-series, including reasonable fluctuations, correlation signs, and autocorrelations. However, the model was unable to capture some subtle differences in productivity and job destruction rate series across the countries, which is its main limitation.
This study examines the causes of the rather dissimilar development of individual EU economies after the 2008/09 crisis. The initial elemental analysis of contributions to GDP growth is followed by a growth accounting exercise, with decomposition into the effects of movements in total factor productivity, capital stock, and several labour market indicators. The subsequent section then seeks to clarify to what extent this development was driven by changes in cyclical conditions and the potential product.
The Central and Eastern European new Member States of the European Union (CEECs) went through the transition process following the commandments of the Washington Consensus, which gradually evolved into the “integrative growth model”. External liberalisation exposed the CEECs to recurring problems over external imbalances, bubbles driven by capital inflows, and resulting growth instabilities. Large foreign direct investment inflows attracted by repressed wages and low taxes do not accelerate growth. Arguably, real convergence would be much faster under a system with built-in limitations to free trade, free capital movements – and with more scope for traditional industrial, trade, incomes, and fiscal policies.
The European Union does not have a comprehensive common tax policy and substantial changes in this specialized policy area are not likely in the foreseeable future. Albeit common rules, requirements, minimum rates for certain tax types were implemented in the last few decades, they barely limit the Member States in using their tax policies as one of the worthiest elements of their arsenal in increasing competitiveness or quite the contrary, to undermining their own international competitiveness inadvertently through a misguided tax policy. In this article, we put the tax policies of the Visegrad Group and the Eurozone core countries (Germany, Austria and the Netherlands), as well as changes in these policies under the magnifying glass, in terms of the impact of tax structure changes on economic growth and employment in the last decade.
The principal component analysis is a practical method for multivariate statistical analyses. It can eliminate the correlation between sample indexes, and on the premise of keeping the main information of samples, extract a few representative principal components. This article adopts the input—output method and principal component analysis. It carries on the transverse comparison research on the effective utilization situation of human resources in China in 2008 and reveals the actual situation of efficient use of human resources in the provinces in China. The degree of effective use of human resources in Beijing is the highest, while in Ningxia is the lowest. It is closely related to the economic development. Finally, it puts forward the thoughts and suggestions of improving the effective use of human resources in China.
The subject of the paper is related to the tainting of the public contract award process and the consequences generated by it: corruption in public procurement, which is a major problem of the Romanian economy, recognised and pointed out both at the national and at the European level. The study provides empirical evidence that between 2009–2013 there were many companies that repeatedly win public procurement contracts and do business only (or almost only) with the local and central authorities (contracting authorities who represent the interests of political parties). At the theoretical level, the profile of these companies, called political companies, is identified.
The paper provides a systematic review on the cost-of-illness studies in an age-associated condition with high prevalence, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), published in Medline between 2005 and 2015. Overall 11 studies were included, which were conducted in 8 countries. In the US, the annual direct medical costs per patient ranged from $255 to $5,729, while in Europe from €253 to €1,251. In 2008, in the UK total annual direct medical costs of BPH were £180.8 million at national level. In the US, overall costs of BPH management in the private sector were estimated at $3.9 billion annually, of which $500 million was attributable to productivity loss (year 1999). Due to demographic factors and possible surgical innovations in the field of urology, the costs of BPH are likely to increase in the future. Over the next decade the age of retirement is projected to rise, consequently, the indirect costs related to aging-associated conditions such as BPH are expected to soar. To promote the transparent and cost-effective management of BPH, development of rational clinical guidelines would be essential that may lead to significant improvement in quality of care as well as reduction in healthcare expenditure.
The traditional baseball instruction strategies were mainly conducted by the instructors with oral explanation and exemplification while students had to improve their performance in athletic activities through continuous practice. During the learning process of athletic skills, students oftentimes posed less confidence due to unskilled body movement resulting in lower achievement sense. Finally, they started to reject the engagement in relevant athletic activities and even never practice anymore. Therefore, this research aimed to explore the influence on the learning motivation and the performance of athletic skills made by students in the conventionally instructive mode by introducing the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) instruction strategies of the kinect baseball learning system. Research results indicated: (1) after the kinect baseball learning system was introduced into instruction, it positively affected the learning motivation of students; (2) after the kinect baseball learning system was introduced into instruction, it positively affected the performance of athletic skills of students.
Slow tourism, a sustainable tourism pattern gradually emphasized over the past years, stresses on experiencing tourism campaigns with slow and recreational attitudes to create value for life and enhance well-being. Although the concept of slow tourism presents certain consensus in academic studies, it still encounters a lot of operational challenges, which could be properly solved through the educational training of operators and consumers and the economic value chain formed by industry alliances. In terms of the practical operation, the slow tourism promotion architecture is developed for promoting slow tourism in Green Island, Taiwan. The architecture is divided into two stages. The preparation stage focuses on communication, training, and the improvement of industrial environment to form the slow tourism industry alliance for cross-selling and importing visitors. The operational stage tends to form the overall image of the destination by maintaining the quality of slow tourism through review and innovation and gradually extend the slow tourism industry alliance. The key role in the promotion architecture is local intermediary organizations which integrate internal and external resources to have slow tourism present the maximal benefits.
The balance-of-payments can act as a constraint on the rate of output growth, on putting a limit to the growth in the level of demand to which supply can adapt. Regional economies might be particularly sensitive to this effect, since they are presumably more integrated among them. In this paper, we examine this issue for the case of the 17 Spanish regions over the period 1988–2009, and calculate their balance-of-payments-constrained growth rates. By comparing these balance-of-payments-constrained growth rates with the actual growth rates, we would be able to assess whether the balance-of-payments has worked as a constraint on growth.
The occurrence of Asian Financial Crisis and successive scandals highlight the importance of corporate governance on which the public start to stress. “Pursuing internationalization for sustainable development” has become a trend for corporate development in the future. Nonetheless, the promotion of internationalization enhances multiple operating environments and information complexity. An enterprise therefore has to adjust the existing organizational structure and construct favorable corporate governance mechanisms to timely reflect market demands and have the enterprise acquire the advantage of the economy of scale through overseas extension points. With the approach of globalization era, the extreme dependence of economic activities on import/export hastens Taiwan actively joining in World Trade Organization (WTO) to enhance the circulation of goods and resources among member states. Under such a trend, the industrial structure in Taiwan needs to be adjusted, and industries with competitiveness would present larger development space. Aiming at listed companies in Taiwan Stock Exchange, the research period is set 16 years, from 1999 to 2014. The research results conclude that 1. competition would affect corporate governance, 2. competition would influence corporate performance, and 3. corporate governance would affect corporate performance. The research results are expected to inspire international enterprises with the competition evaluation and corporate governance adjustment to promote the corporate performance.
The enhancement of economic development and living standard in last years has the people stress more on recreational life that tourism becomes prevalent in Taiwan. County and city governments positively promote tourism and hold cultural festivals to enhance the boom of accommodation and catering industries and further fire national tourism market and catering industry.
Through online questionnaire survey, the customers of Wang Steak, TASTy, Tokiya, and ikki, which are the subsidiaries of Wowprime and burst out the oil scandal recently, are distributed 800 copies of questionnaires. Total 388 effective copies are retrieved with the effective rate 49%. The research results are concluded as follows. 1. Crisis Communication Strategies would affect Media Report. 2. Crisis Communication Strategies would influence Corporate Image. 3. Media Report has significantly positive effects on Managerial Capacity in Corporate Image. 4. Media Report presents remarkably positive effects on Corporate Reputation in Corporate Image. 5. Media Report shows notably positive effects on Communication News in Corporate Image. It is expected that catering businesses could enhance the countermeasures of Crisis Communication Strategies to cope with crises.
The rapid advance of science technology and civilization has resulted in people’s activities being more complicated as various new problems are likely to occur at any time. Problem-solving abilities therefore become a basic competence to survive in modern societies. In the problem-solving process, the development of creativity is required to break through dilemmas. School education aims to cultivate students’ decision-making and problem-solving competence. Nonetheless, the educational approaches and contents in Taiwan stress too much on mastery learning, and ignore the development of curiosity and creative potential.
Aiming at the students in the department of business management in national universities in Taiwan, total 300 copies of questionnaires are distributed, and 187 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 62%, in which each retrieved copy is regarded as a valid sample. The research findings show that Curriculum Design presents partially positive effects on Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration in Creative Potential Developing and Background Variables reveal significant moderating effects on the correlations between Curriculum Design and Creative Potential Developing.
The promotion of educational standards and the rising independent awareness of females, females are gradually taking a place in the employment market. Industrial structure evolution and social transformation have the societies in Taiwan change from traditional manufacturing to hi-tech, information, and food service industries. Demands for human resources therefore become different from the past that lots of employment opportunities were indirectly created for females. Regarding the labor participation rate, the increasing female engagement in workplaces has enhanced the generation of female leadership. The unique female personality traits could assist female managers in forming unique management styles in business management. Aiming at Wowprime, total 650 copies of questionnaires are distributed, and 477 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 73%. The results conclude 1. positive effects of leadership on teamwork, 2. positive effects of teamwork on organizational performance, and 3. positive effects of leadership on organizational performance. The results are expected to help the leadership of female managers in catering industry.
Human resource is the major source of competitive advantages for an enterprise. Discussions aiming at the role of human resource in educational communities are progressing in past years. From the mobility of human resource in an organization, retaining human assets or reducing the mobility to the lowest are considered as the professional commitment of human resource and the direction for efforts. A new viewpoint about the role of human resource reveals that the role of human resource is to change social capital into the driving force of competitive advantages of an organization. It might affect the presentation of different roles of human resource in various corporate characteristics. For this reason, the effects of high-tech corporate characteristics on social capital and role of human resource management are discussed in this study.
Aiming at Kunshan High-tech Industrial Development Zone, the management and the employees in the manufacturers are distributed 1000 copies of questionnaires, and 683 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 68%. The research results show 1. significantly positive effects of social capital on the role of human resource, 2. remarkably positive effects of corporate characteristics on social capital, and 3. notably positive effects of corporate characteristics on the role of human resource. It is expected to verify richer and more diverse effects for the reference of successive research and practice communities.
In the economic growth process when China joined in WTO, internationalized operation has become an inevitable issue. Under the new normal economic condition, including the cut offtariffs on imported goods, businesses in China have realized the importance of enhancing the overall brand image, quality of products and services, and the international compatibility. Businesses of China need to develop creative and high-value-added products, and shall be able to rapidly change to satisfy market requirements to distinguish themselves from other products. It is the way of creating a new pattern of upgrading. It is the market-orientated development that is a primary condition for enterprises to adapt to the rapidly changing environment, keeping growth and attracting customers, acquiring competitive advantages, and creating excellent value for customers. It reveals the fact that in the future, businesses must change the focus from product to market needs. It is the marketorientation which could generate the competitive strength to resist competitors.
The research involves in total 45 international enterprises, which are distributed with the questionnaires. There are totally 124 and 107 copies of questionnaires retrieved from manufacturing industry and service industry, with valid retrieval rates of 54% and 46%, respectively. The research results show that: 1. there is positive effect of market orientation on breakthrough innovation, 2. there is positive effect of breakthrough innovation on organizational performance, and 3. there is positive effect of market orientation on organizational performance. Based upon the results, some suggestions are proposed in this study, expecting to help international enterprises develop market orientation, enhance breakthrough innovation, and improve organizational performance.
The fiercely competitive markets in tourism industry have caused difficulty in developing new consumers. In addition to keep the quality of service, a tourism business has to change the marketing strategies and focus on the maintenance of relationship bonding with current consumers. In this study, the employees and customers of Chateau Beach Resort Kenting are distributed 300 copies of questionnaire. After deducting invalid and incomplete ones, total 162 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 54%. The research results are summarized as follows. 1. Relationship bonding presents significantly positive correlations with brand attitudes. 2. Brand attitudes reveal remarkably positive correlations with customer loyalty. 3. Relationship bonding shows notably positive correlations with customer loyalty. 4. Brand attitudes have partial mediating effects on the correlations between relationship bonding and customer loyalty. Aiming at above results, suggestions are proposed to help tourism businesses create better operation performance.
The Hungarian tax system has undergone significant changes in recent years. The weight of labour taxes decreased by 3.3 percentage points, while the weight of consumption taxes increased by 3.7 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. This type of tax shift is not a country-specific one, but its rate is one of the largest in Europe. This study gives a brief overview of literature, followed by a presentation of the Hungarian tax structure in an international comparison, and a summary of the main changes of the tax system and relating measures, which entered into force after 2010. Then, in addition to the tax centralization indicators published by the Eurostat, an adjusted tax centralization indicator for the EU states is presented, which eliminates the tax component of public spending and transfers, takes into account the mandatory private pension contribution and compares the adjusted tax burden to the corresponding private tax base.
An interpretation of fairness based on the equal sacrifice principle is not clear; three taxation rules can be derived from it. Instead of searching for a fair tax system, ethical behavior of the taxpayer should be expected and set as a target. Ethical taxation can be encouraged and the propensity to pay taxes could be reinforced by abolishing the secrecy of individual and family tax returns, setting restrictions on cash operations which are associated with corruption, and gradually eliminating tax havens and offshore areas.
Governments throughout the EU and OECD countries rely on revenues raised on capital income. Albeit several arguments can be made for keeping these taxes, in their widespread form they hinder capital accumulation and significantly lower potential growth due to their savings and investment distorting nature. At the same time, the actual economic impact of tax types is largely influenced by their structure. An elegant method, which is also simple in its concept, for eliminating the economic distortions of profit taxes is cash-flow taxation which moves income taxes closer to the more growth-friendly value-added taxes. The small business tax, which was introduced in Hungary in 2013, was designed along these principles. In this paper we review the theoretical literature on cash-flow taxation and discuss the main regulatory elements of the small business tax, as well as the solutions elaborated for working out the challenges related to its implementation.
At the end of 2014, more than 23% of the foreign currency denominated mortgage portfolio in Hungary was overdue; about 20% was classified as non-performing and the tendency is worsening. In this paper, we propose a solution to effectively reduce the credit and systemic risk inherent to this portfolio – the proposed model can be applied to other mortgage portfolios in trouble as well. The main element of our proposal is income-contingent repayment complemented with effective incentives to motivate debtors to repay their debt. We demonstrate that the proposed scheme is attractive for both the debtors and the lenders; therefore, contrary to some recent policy measures, in this case there is no need for direct state intervention to force modifications to the existing legal contracts. In order to evaluate the possible effects, we simulated a realistic population of borrowers with different age, debt, loan-to-value, and income. Then we calculated the expected income paths, the repayments of the borrowers as well as the profit of the lenders on the basis of the non-performing FX mortgage portfolio. The results underpin that the proposed scheme creates significant value added and, most importantly, that it can effectively reduce the vulnerability of the entire economy to future shocks.
A 2010 banking survey of 42 foreign bank executives by Price Waterhouse Coopers ranked competition from “domestic” Chinese banks as their primary concern. This outranked the “regulatory environment” which had been number one for the previous two years. Several reasons were cited by foreign bank managers but three stand out: (1) declining market share for foreign banks due to reduced number of multinationals doing business in China, (2) foreign banks reluctance to lend locally due to the global economic slowdown, (3) the aggressive lending strategies of Chinese banks. This paper focuses on the new reality of contemporary Chinese banking practice. We believe Chinese banks are learning and adapting. They are gaining expertise in a wide array of bank operations such as asset management, branching, securities, leasing and many more. To better understand the nature and context of growing Chinese bank competitiveness, we introduce and apply the concept financial “econiche”. Financial econiche refers to the learning and adapting that takes place in a specific financial “ecological” surrounding with attention paid to the macroeconomic need for harmonious development. Econiche theory borrows heavily from similar ideas in the natural world. We construct an evaluation indexation system based on the econiche theory, and use Huaxia bank as a case study.
The paper provides a general evaluation of inflation targeting in Poland with some reference to challenges faced by major central banks. First, it argues that inflation targeting has proved to be relatively successful in Poland and attributes this success to a bias towards the aggressive mitigation of inflationary risks, whenever they have arisen. Second, it briefly explains why the National Bank of Poland does not need to search for an alternative to inflation targeting. Then, it presents the negative aspects of the price level targeting and nominal GDP targeting. Third, it refers to the post- EU accession experience of Poland as being supportive for the “leaning against the wind” approach to monetary policy conducting. Fourth, it argues that such an approach is supported by evidence on the effects of the crisis’ outburst and aggressive interest rate cuts on trust in central banks. Fifth, it indicates the determinants of slow post-crisis restructuring and persistently high uncertainty as desired priorities in the research agenda in central banks.
This article uses dynamic panel analysis to investigate the relationship between institutional improvement and economic performance in 29 transition countries. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we find that per capita GDP is determined by the entire history of institutional reform under transition and that, conditional on this history, per capita GDP adjusts to recent institutional changes. Moreover, we find that the time-horizon over which we measure institutional change matters, with five-year changes showing the clearest effects on current levels of per capita GDP. Secondly, we address the pronounced methodological heterogeneity of this literature. To compensate for incomplete theoretical guidance from the institutional literature, we draw upon an institutional meta-regression analysis to inform our model specification. Our analysis covers the period 1992–2007.
By using the input—output method and principal component analysis, this paper did a comparative research on the input—output efficiency of human resources of science and technology among the world’s leading countries, and revealed the actual situation of the input—output efficiency of human resources of science and technology in our country. Among all these seven countries, the input—output efficiency of human resources of science and technology in Japan is the highest, and in China the lowest. There is a significant linear relationship between input and output. And finally, it put forward the thoughts and suggestions about improving the input and output efficiency of human resources of science and technology.
Time is in constant motion: the present, the future and the past, although they are not concepts having a fixed meaning, they are present in everyday life both at the conscious and the unconscious levels. The author’s intention in this paper is to grasp the relationship of companies to time and to the future in the mature and nascent states of their life cycles. As discussed in this paper, this relationship may appear with little reflection in the form of assumptions in the eyes of strategy researchers and practitioners. At first the interrelatedness of theory and practice is discussed in order to focus on the role of scholars and practitioners in creating theory and putting it to practice or vice versa. This general introduction will lay the ground for the study of interpretations of the future and time from the perspective of strategy research and strategy practice, respectively.
Wine is a very special product from an economic, cultural, and sociological point of view. Wine culture and wine trade play an important role in Hungary. The effect of cultural and geographical proximity on international trade has already been proven in the international trade literature. The size of bilateral trade flows between any two countries can be approximated by the gravity theory of trade. The gravity model provides empirical evidence of the relationship between the size of the economies, the distances between them, and their trade. This paper seeks to analyse the effect of cultural and geographical proximity on Hungary’s bilateral wine trade between 2000 and 2012, employing the gravity equation. The analysis is based on data from the World Bank WITS, WDI, as well as CEPII, and WTO databases. I apply OLS, Random Effects, Poisson, Pseudo-Poisson-Maximum-Likelihood and Heckman two stage estimators to calculate the gravity regression. The results show that in the case of Hungary, cultural similarity and trade liberalisation have a positive impact, while geographical distance, landlockedness, and contiguity have a negative impact on Hungarian wine exports.
This article compares the experience of the Baltic countries and the eurozone’s southern members, the GIPS (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain), in terms of the run-up to the Great Recession and the eurozone crisis, responses during the downturn, and the subsequent recovery (or lack thereof). It discusses numerous apparent similarities in terms of the build-up of macroeconomic vulnerabilities and the content of anti-crisis strategies pursued as well as the substantially different results of these policies. This article applies the VoC (Varieties of Capitalism) approach. To this end, it presents theoretical expectations regarding different varieties’ vulnerability to macroeconomic imbalances, preferences regarding anti-crisis policy as well as the likely outcome of the internal devaluation strategy. The article finds the VoC approach largely useful, although it is more helpful in accounting for the nature of reaction to the crisis and the outcomes of anti-crisis policy, while less so in explaining the initial accumulation of vulnerabilities.
As readily proven by the Credit Crunch and the consequent 2008 Global Financial Crisis, our perception of what law and regulation can achieve to forestall financial calamities and to protect the integrity of the system was seriously mistaken. Besides the misjudged risks generated by financial innovation as well as financial pathology and general incomprehension of finance as such, two further misconceptions are of interdisciplinary nature. On the one hand, the risk-type that was brought to the surface by the Credit Crunch was systemic risk; a risk of complexity and dimensions that was corollary only to the Great Depression erupting in 1929. From a legal perspective, this meant unprecedented interpenetration of various branches of law, from mortgage and corporate to securities law. The central piece in the puzzle – asset securitization – was a synergic product of these. The first conclusion the paper draws is that in the light of this there is a need for a new legal discipline – the law of finance – that would spread over all these branches of law (internal inter-disciplinarity). On the other hand, both the Credit Crunch as well as the subsequent developments on financial markets show that understanding finance and the risks inherent to it are not only becoming increasingly problematic (not only for lawyers) but that some of the risks are unidentifiable (“unknown unknowns”). Finance is inherently complex, yet further exacerbating factors are the growing presence of technology, mathematization of finance (and economics) and the possible synergic effects of various, often seemingly not linked, financial products. The second claim this paper makes consequently is that legal scholarship should face, comprehend and reckon with the roles other disciplines increasingly play in finance (external inter-disciplinarity) and the fundamentally altered nature of finance. Subscribing to the conclusion – on an abstract and theoretical level – that the looming crises should be perceived as multi-disciplinary phenomena that as such require multi-disciplinary panacea and more cooperation from the affected disciplines would be easy. In reality, however, little seems to have changed. Suffice to take a look at law school curricula to realize that actually few have recipes for such seemingly simple but practical questions as how to teach the law of finance, especially where consensus has not been reached even on whether teach it at all. Equally heavy dilemmas are already presented for regulators or judges when deciding on issues from the realms of finance law.
Financial markets in the Visegrad countries have undergone several changes in lending business over the past decade. This study evaluates the efficiency of the largest commercial banks by focusing on their lending decisions using Data Envelopment Analysis. First, we define the concept of efficiency, then we analyse loan efficiency between 2007 and 2013. The results indicate that average efficiency declined. When we studied the loan efficiency in each country separately, we found that Hungarian banks had the lowest efficiency while the highest efficiency was achieved mainly by Czech banks. The results of the study also suggest that efficiency is positively related to profitability and capital adequacy, and negatively related to the share of non-performing loans, which confirms the bad management hypothesis.
The risk of individual investment in higher education is not a well-researched topic compared to the rate of return to education. In many countries tuition fees are low, but there is a possibility to borrow for investment in education. This can lead to irresponsible investment behaviour. The paper will show that the student loan market is too small to cause a macroeconomic crisis, but that it is a market with many stakeholders and irresponsible behaviour should not be encouraged. With the examination of a Hungarian sample, it can be concluded that in the context of higher education, signs of rational investment behaviour can be found. The risks of post-secondary studies are not yet fully understood and measured, and for this reason further research is suggested.
In the era of knowledge economy, a country’s economic competitiveness depends largely on the development level of high-tech industry. This paper evaluates the efficiency of China’s high-tech industry in 31 provinces in 2012 with data envelopment analysis. The empirical results are summarized as following. Firstly, when the effects of exogenous environmental variables are not controlled, the comprehensive technical efficiency of 31 provinces will be overestimated, the pure technical efficiency will be underestimated, and the scale efficiency value will be overestimated. Secondly, after eliminating the environmental impact, the comprehensive technical efficiency of 31 provinces with the average of 0.395 is rather low, due to the low scale efficiency.
The purposes of this paper were to explore the relationship between media coverage and stock returns in Taiwan stock markets. The empirical results were as follows: (1) stock returns showed causality with either media coverage amounts or the degrees of good/bad media coverage; (2) when impacted by the past stock returns, the stock return might finish its response to the impulse around three days and showed a negative effect, whereas when impacted by the past media coverage amounts, the media coverage amount might also finish its response to the impulse within three day and showed a negative effect; (3) when impacted by the degrees of the past good media coverage, the good media coverage degree might finish its response in three days and showed a negative effect, in which a positive effect might be presented on the first two days, while the effect might turn negative on the third day. Given that, when impacted by the past stock returns, the stock return might finish its response to the impulse within three days and showed a negative effect and, when impacted by the degrees of the past good media coverage, the stock return might also finish its response in three days and showed a negative effect. That is, media coverage could be used as an indicator to predict stock returns in the Taiwan stock markets when making investment decisions.
Using a sample of Spanish undergraduate students, this research contributes to stakeholder theory by developing empirical testing of normative stakeholder management orientation. It also offers empirical evidence on how the type of higher education received affects how individuals assess stakeholders’ interests. The results show that, in general, business students give less importance to the normative approach and consider it less necessary to take secondary stakeholders into account for a normative reason than their non-business counterparts do. Therefore, this study raises awareness on the influence of business education on individuals’ ethical decision-making process and suggests some possible changes for business teaching.
The paper analyses the inconsequence and problems of Russian economic policy to accelerate economic growth. The authors consider three components of growth rate (potential, Russian business cycle, and world business cycle components) and conclude that in order to pursue an effective economic policy to accelerate growth, it has to be addressed to the potential (long-run) growth component. The main ingredients of this policy are government spending restructuring and budget institutions reform, labour and capital markets reform as well as productivity growth.
A quiet tax revolution in Hungary?
Interview with Dr. György Matolcsy, governor of the Central Bank
With the promotion of economic liberalization and internationalization, consumer demands have become complex and diversified. Businesses have to actively promote themselves and bring forth new marketing tactics to attract buying and cope with fierce competition so as to enhance the global competitiveness and implement the idea of sustainable operation. This study aims to investigate the relationship between marketing strategy management, customer relationship management, and perceived value.
Aiming at Suzhou Industrial Park, the executives and employees of the manufacturers are distributed 500 copies of questionnaire for this study, and 367 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 73%. The research results show the significant correlations between 1. marketing strategy management and customer relationship management, 2. customer relationship management and perceived value, and 3. marketing strategy management and perceived value. Aiming at above results, suggestions are proposed to create better organizational performance for a business.
This research established the youth entrepreneur satisfaction forming path and behavior intention model on the base of classical customer satisfaction index model, and took the 172 youth entrepreneurs as research object, who have been supported by China Youth Entrepreneurship Program (YBC) Mianyang Office since 2007. This study applies factor analysis and structural equation model to reveal the satisfaction formation mechanism which affects by the youth entrepreneurs expectations, guidance quality and guidance value perception, as well as the entrepreneurs’ subsequent behavior affected by the satisfaction. The results show that the mentor image has significantly positive effect on the youth entrepreneur expectation. The latter affects the satisfaction through the guidance quality perception to exert influence on the youth’s guidance value perception; youth entrepreneur expectation, guidance value perception and guidance quality perception have positive effects on satisfaction. As for the youth entrepreneurs’ behavioral intention, the youth’s satisfaction had significantly negative effects on their complaint and significantly positive effects on their loyalty. In addition, there were significantly negative effects between the youth entrepreneurs’ complaint and loyalty.
In this paper, I outline an alternative public debt rule, a basic structure that provides a sufficient reduction of public debt in the long term, with an escape clause ensuring the opportunity for countercyclical budgetary manoeuvring and the avoidance of the so-called ratchet effect. The last section outlines a basic institutional framework. I have raised this topic in the hope of supporting the Hungarian discussion about fiscal rules and perhaps to contribute to it. I am certain that this rule is far from perfect, but I believe it is a good starting point.
