Suchergebnisse

AbstractFive real exchange rate indicators are computed to assess the international competitiveness of Hungarian industry. These indicators are explained in econometric equations by employment, unemployment, productivity, interest spread and real producer wage. Causality tests reveal that external performance has an impact on real exchange rates, and contributes to explaining real exchange rates. There is very limited scope for policy intervention to constrain the negative effects of capital inflows without incurring other costs.

Macro-economic analysis of price structure, investment and income.
The author takes as his theme a comparison of the sectoral structures of investment (« accumulation ») and profit (« income ») or, if prefered, the sectoral differentiation in rates of self-financing. His results are clear, despite methodological difficulties : material services finance themselves more or less, but there is an enormous transfer of funds (covering about 40 % of investment) between profitable industry (the « providing » sector), and agriculture and the insufficiently available non-material services (the « receiving » sectors).
The author considers this situation an unhealthy one ; he analyses its underlying causes and suggests, as a way out of the vicious circle, a simultaneous lowering of prices in heavy industry balanced by a rise in prices in agriculture and services, so as to restore equilibrium in self-financing in all sectors of the economy.

Pre-Accession Transition Countries (PATCs) aim at early admittance to the monetary club. Their fiscal indicators - deficit and debt - do not show any serious symptoms. Closer scrutiny reveals, however, that the interest burden of their public debt might be underestimated, and that restructuring and unavoidable fiscal transparency may increase their debt significantly. All in all about 1 per cent primary surplus might be sufficient to remain on the safe side of their debt in the medium run. According to the estimated model the fiscal adjustment is driven by the external imbalance, the monetary conditions are determined by the fiscal stress and their growth is affected by fiscal and monetary stimuli.

AbstractOur aim in this paper is twofold: to find whether FDI causes horizontal or vertical productivity spillovers to domestically‐owned Hungarian manufacturing firms, and to see if distance matters in spillovers. For this exercise we use a large panel of Hungarian firms and different panel models. Consistently with previous research, at the country level, we find positive vertical spillovers but no evidence of positive horizontal spillovers. By taking distance into consideration, however, we find positive horizontal spillovers for domestic firms close to foreign‐owned firms. By constructing spillover measures weighted by distance, we find similar patterns. Our results underline the importance of labour market rigidity and the local nature of knowledge in the case of horizontal spillovers.

Pre-Accession Transition Countries (PATCs) aim at early admittance to the monetary club. Their fiscal indicators – deficit and debt - do not show any serious symptoms. Closer scrutiny reveals, however, that the interest burden of their public debt might be underestimated, and that restructuring and unavoidable fiscal transparency may increase their debt significantly. All in all about 1 per cent primary surplus might be sufficient to remain on the safe side of their debt in the medium run. According to the estimated model the fiscal adjustment is driven by the external imbalance, the monetary conditions are determined by the fiscal stress and their growth is affected by fiscal and monetary stimuli. ; Die fiskalpolitischen Grundlagen für die Konvergenz der Transformationsländer hin zur Europäischen Union. Die Transformationsländer wollen möglichst schnell dem monetären Club beitreten. Ihre fiskalischen Indikatoren ? Defizite und Verschuldung ? weisen nicht auf ernsthafte Symptome für Probleme hin. Eine nähere Betrachtung zeigt jedoch, dass die Zinslast ihrer öffentlichen Verschuldung möglicherweise unterschätzt wird und dass eine Restruktierung im Zusammenhang mit einer unvermeidlichen fiskalischen Transparenz die Verschuldung beträchtlich ausweiten wird. Insgesamt wird ein Primärüberschuss von etwa 1 Prozent ausreichend sein, um in der mittleren Frist bei der Verschuldung auf der sicheren Seite zu sein. Nach dem geschätzten Modell wird die fiskalpolitische Anpassung durch das aussenwirtschaftliche Ungleichgewicht bestimmt, die monetären Bedingungen werden durch den fiskalischen Druck determiniert und das Wachstum wird durch fiskalische und monetäre Impulse beinflusst.

This paper investigates the link between competition and efficiency for the Hungarian corporate sector during various phases of the transition process. We employ frontier production functions to explore differences among groups of firms, and to identify the typical adjustment process of each group separately throughout the transition period until 1997. The estimated production functions indicate a gradual improvement in efficiency and a shift from decreasing to increasing returns to scale due to the growing share of small firms. Market share can be explained by domestic and foreign competition and by the efficiency of the firm.JEL classification: C23, D21, D24.

AbstractThis paper follows through an aspect of microeconomic restructuring in Hungary during the transition period. This restructuring brought about substantial changes in the behaviour of all economic agents. Our study combines labour market and corporate financial information to explore the effect of the quality of labour employed on the profitability of the firm. The quality of labour is measured as that portion of wage differentials that cannot be explained by a standard human capital model. The profitability of Hungarian exporting firms can be explained by economic factors during transition. In addition the quality of labour, export share, wage and bank costs, payables, receivables, foreign ownership, inventories, amortization and equity are all significant explanatory variables.

We estimate a model of importers in Hungarian microdata and conduct counterfactual analysis to investigate the effect of imported inputs on productivity. We find that importing all input varieties would increase a firm's revenue productivity by 22 percent, about one-half of which is due to imperfect substitution between foreign and domestic inputs. Foreign firms use imports more effectively and pay lower fixed import costs. We attribute one-quarter of Hungarian productivity growth during the 1993–2002 period to imported inputs. Simulations show that the productivity gain from a tariff cut is larger when the economy has many importers and many foreign firms. (JEL D24, F13, F14, L60)