Agricultural policy and performance in Hungary

From a number of perspectives it is demonstrated that Hungarian agricultural development has been quite successful. Five decisions contributed to that success: collectivization via the carrot rather than the stick; transformation of cooperatives into the backbone of Hungarian agriculture; development of symbiotic conditions between socialist and private agriculture; decentralization of agricultural decisionmaking; and fostering of development of new institutional forms that contributed toward the rapid spread of technological advances. Personal incomes have become more dependent on profit; relative profit opportunities among agricultural commodities and markets have played an important role in determining input, output, and marketing decisions.     

Reforming the new economic mechanism in Hungary

Following steps taken towards recentralization between 1972 and 1976, the reform measures introduced in 1980 and 1981 have re-established the original directions of the New Economic Mechanism in Hungary. The NEM, established in 1968, had aimed at replacing plan directives by market relations among firms, limiting the scope of central price determination, linking domestic prices to world-market prices, and increasingly decentralizing investment decisions. The recent reform measures are evaluated and possible future changes are considered. Price setting, exchange rate and protection, wage determination and personal income, investment decisions, and organizational structure are examined.     

Deepening the economic reform from the relationship between man and nature

Since 1978, China has gained worldwide shin- ing achievements following the idea of seeking the truth of the fact to carry out economic reform for over 20 years. From the relationship between hu- man being and nature, the economic development has entered a new era, eco-era. The new era re- quires us to further deepen economic reform from the relationship of human being and nature while we are keeping on economic reform based on the relationship between human beings so as to realize sustainable…     

Complementarities in economic reform

The authors report on technical work which examines the implications of combining complementarities and convex adjustment costs in a model of economic reform. The main results are that the optimal pace of reform is higher if there is a larger initial crisis, stronger pro-reform institutions, and greater immediate potential entrepreneurship. This supports the argument that radical reform was appropriate for most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, while gradualism was more appropriate for a country like China.     

Causal relationship between construction investment policy and economic growth in Turkey

The construction industry in countries experiencing severe economic crisis has vital importance to get out of stagnation because of its direct relations with 200 different sectors. In this study, the relationship between the construction growth data (infrastructure, building and residential (public), building and residential (private) investment) and gross domestic product (GDP) is examined for Turkey. To this end, Engle–Granger cointegration, error correction model (ECM) and Granger causality tests were applied in order to determine the aforementioned relation. It has been found that the infrastructure and building–residential investments have direct relations with the GDP and have causality effects.     

Real exchange rate and exchange rate policy in Hungary

Five 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.     

拉丁美洲1990年代经济改革特点--以墨西哥经济改革为例

拉丁美洲在20世纪90年代前后开始的全面经济改革,新自由主义属性显著。在这一过程中,墨西哥的新自由经济改革颇具代表性。因此,以墨西哥的加工贸易和国有企业私有化为例,分析拉丁美洲经济改革中的特点以及出现的问题。     

Austrian economic policy

Zusammenfassung Die österreichische Wirtschaftspolitik wird in Österreich vielfach als austro-keynesianisch etikettiert. Der vorliegende aufsatz versucht zu zeigen, daß das Keynesianische dieser Politik nicht in einer Stop-and-go-Politik besteht, was üblicherweise als Keynesianismus bezeichnet wird. Vielmehr zielt die österreichische Wirtschaftspolitk darauf ab, intrinsische Instabilitäten des Marktprozesses als Folge von Unsicherheiten oder wechselnden Erwartungen durch gesamtwirtschaftliche Arrangements zu reduzieren: Sozialpartnerschaft, stabiler Finanzsektor, Unabhängigkeit der Investitionsentscheidungen von monetären Faktoren sowie Dominanz automatischer Stabilisatoren. Diese Reduktion von Marktinstabilitäten kann als fundamentale Politikempfehlung Keynes' angesehen werden.Der Terminus Austro in der Bezeichnung der österreichischen Wirtschaftspolitik weist darauf hin, daß es ein hausgemachtes Konzept ist, welches neben keynesianischen Elementen auch klassische Relikte, neoklassische Erweiterungen, monetaristische Vermutungen oder einfach Wirtschaftspolitik à la Hausverstand beinhaltet. Dies gilt insbesondere für eine Vielzahl von selektiven Eingriffen wie Investitions-, Spar- oder Exportförderung. Gemeinsam ist diesen selektiven Eingriffen, daß sie üblicherweise als Erklärungen für die Erfolge der österreichischen Wirtschaftspolitik herangezogen werden; der konkrete Beweis hiefür steht jedoch aus.Der Aufsatz unternimmt den Versuch, das austro-keynesianische Konzept theoretisch wie auch empirisch kritisch zu prüfen.

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Revised joint version of two papers presented at the Premier colloque du Club européen des associations d'économistes: Les politiques économiques des années 1980, Paris, March 1983. The conference volume will be published under the editorship of P. Maillet, Association Française de Science Economique.     

Incentives and corruption in chinese economic reform

This paper argues that, given the legacy of Chinese communism and its political structure, corruption, together with the threat of punishment for corruption and the selective enforcement of this threat, serves as a method of compensation that both satisfies the political objectives of the Communist Party and provides an effective inducement to local officials to promote economic reform.     

US economic policy uncertainty and co-movements between Chinese and US stock markets

This paper investigates the impact of innovations in US economic policy uncertainty on the co-movements of China's A/B stock markets with the US stock market. We show that it is the absolute changes in the US economic policy uncertainty index that have a negative impact on the co-movements. The finding is robust to the asymmetric effects of non-policy-uncertainty shocks, to a break in the correlation structure, and to the four Chinese A/B stock markets investigated. Our results provide the first evidence regarding how stock market correlations are driven by policy-related uncertainty shocks in the international context.     

Terrorism and international economic policy

We add to the ongoing discussion regarding the policy consequences of terrorism by analyzing the effect of terrorism on international economic policy for a panel of 170 countries between 1970 and 2016. We find that countries resort to less liberal international economic policies when facing the threat of terrorism. This effect is especially relevant to smaller (less populated) countries. Our main finding is robust to an instrumental-variable approach. We argue that governments pursue less liberal international economic policies in response to terrorism to interrupt the organization and financing of terrorism, limit capital flight, stabilize public finances and signal political resolve.     

On economic and social policy

The end of busing of primary and secondary school students has been a major setback for integration of public schools in the USA. The purpose of this paper is not to offer an alternative to busing; regrettably, no obvious alternative stands out. Rather, it is to offer some social, legal and economic background to help the reader consider, and perhaps propose, realistic alternatives that would reduce both racial and economic segregation in our schools and society. The paper is divided into three sections. The first offers background information useful for better understanding and evaluating the end of busing and school resegregation. The second section focuses on an important parallel between racial and economic discrimination. The closing section introduces considerations important for anticipating reactions to, and the costs and benefits of, alternatives to busing for reintegrating schools, as well as several recommendations to which those considerations can be applied.     

Financial openness and economic policy

Economic policy works via two interrelated areas: changes in supply-demand balances and changes in relative prices. Effectiveness of economic policies then depends on the environment in which a given economy operates. The analysis shows that traditional economic policies of fostering growth via public sector investments crucially depend on the private capital account being closed (practically, on the capital mobility being low). An open capital account requires a different set of policies, aimed at facilitating the functioning of private markets and an increase of domestic private savings. This shift in the policy and growth paradigm constitutes the biggest challenge to the global economic community in the beginning of the 21st century.     

Risk and decentralization in the theory of economic policy

In this note, uncertainty is incorporated into Tinbergen's model of economic policy. If the Central Planning Authority's preferences amomg subjective probability distributions can be described by a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function, and if certain restrictions are imposed on these probability distributions, then the Authority can delegate control over partitions of the instrument vector to its Agencies and so decentralize its decision process.     

Issues in controllability and the theory of economic policy

The paper demonstrates that the concepts of dynamic controllability are useful for the theory of economic policy by establishing four propositions. First, dynamic controllability is a central concept in stabilization policy. Second, the ability to achieve a target state, even if it cannot be maintained, may be of economic interest. Third, dynamic controllability is of special interest for ‘historical’ models. Fourth, the conditions for any notion of dynamic controllability are distinct from and weaker than those for Tinbergen static controllability.