New trajectories of the Hungarian regional development

2012

This paper presents a theoretical review of possibilities for a change in paradigm in regional policy, which is part of both territorial policy and economic policy. Advantages and disadvantages of each kind of regional policy are analyzed. Causes and results of the economic depression and its influence on Hungarian economic and regional policy are shown. Desirable directions of a paradigm change in Hungary’s regional policy are proposed.

45th Congress of the European Regional Science …, 2005

During the 1990s, the economic integration of Hungary to the European economic area was widely implemented. At the same time, Hungary experienced considerable regional disparities in economic growth. Motivated by endogenous growth theory and new economic geography, in the present paper I investigate the impact of FDI intensity, export orientation, and regional specialisation on regional growth in Hungary. With panel data of the 20 Hungarian regions covering the years 1994-2001, I perform growth regressions with OLS, after finding regional fixed effects insignificant. I check for the robustness of the results to the omission of the capital region and to the correction for contemporaneous correlation across regions. I find that the share of agricultural employment and the change in export orientation of the regions are the paramount determinants of regional growth. Investment per capita, the change in the employment rate, FDI density and the change in regional specialisation are found to enhance regional growth in some but not all specifications. JEL classification: F15; O19; R11

Theory Methodology Practice, 2011

The geopolitical change of direction taking place after 1989 induced a number of positive and negative social and economic changes in Hungary (as in the other post-socialist countries). Among the latter changes perhaps the most depressing one is that in the past two decades economic policy has not been able to achieve a sustainable and balanced economic growth, either in the short or in the long term, or to manage the problems arising from its lack. The external and internal imbalance (at macro and mezzo levels) arising in this way is continuously generating serious tensions. This paper attempts to find an answer to the question of what role regional policy can play in creating local and regional economic equilibrium and in starting a relative convergence.

DETUROPE - The Central European Journal of Tourism and Regional Development

In the years following the regime change of 1989-90, Hungary faced numerous economic and political challenges. Apart from the dominance of privatisation, the '90s can definitely be described as a decade of transition. The performance of the Hungarian economy had reached the pre-transition level by the turn of the millennium, while the labour market and the structure of economic sectors had undergone substantial changes. In the present paper, we investigate how stable the developed sectoral structure proved to be in the two decades that followed and what territorial specificities the changes were characterised by. Our main question is how further structural changes-besides the sectors' performance (productivity) growthcontributed to the changing economic performance of territorial units in the period of 2000-2019. In our study, we divide productivity change into a "between-sector" and a "within-sector" element. We regard the analysis as a relevant research question in general as well. However, the global financial crisis occurring at the "mid-term" of the studied period (2008) represents a special rupture. The analysis framework is provided by the counties (NUTS3 regions), we conduct our analysis in this context. It can be established that the primary factor of productivity growth is the increase of performance within sector groups and not the change in the economic structure of counties. The impact of structural changes is smaller in magnitude and may even have a negative value in several cases, i.e., the economic structure of counties has shifted from higher-productivity sectors towards those with lower productivity.

Regional Statistics, 2021

This study aims to present the endogenous developmental potential of the Sellye district. We examine the state of the internal capital factors of the area as well as determine indicators that can reveal the spatial structural characteristics of these factors. The main types of settlements of the district, along with the elements above were identified through a cluster analysis based on secondary statistical data. A hierarchical cluster analysis and Ward's method were used to form the clusters. The results show that the endogenous developmental potential of the Sellye district is low; the effects of the socioeconomic problems of the area are reflected in almost all of the examined capital factors. This is especially true for the most disadvantaged and least populated settlements of the district.

This paper has two aims. Firstly, it provides a number of critical reflections of the existing methods of the examinations of intertemporal change of spatial differences of various socio-economic indicators, mainly the per capita income. Practically there are two types of analysis of spatial differences in income level, namely intercountry and intracountry investigations. The diverse growth rate of spatial income level of various spatial units (regions, countries, provinces, counties etc.) is a historical-statistical fact which refers to an unrepeatable, unique and particular historical situation. The descriptions of the convergence or divergence of various spatial units in various time periods contribute to our historical knowledge, but the "testing of convergence approach" has no theoretical basis. Secondly, the larger part of the paper illustrates many theoretical issues by the help of the Hungarian spatial income data between 1988 and 2004. The analysis has four spatia...

Regional Statistics

According to specialist literature, the current development of agglomerations is by large urban areas evolving by the expansion and structural transition of larger urban zones, where “the formerly hierarchic division of settlements with a different size and role is replaced by horizontal cooperation, linking into a network” (Enyedi 2012, p. 17). The aim of the present paper is to examine, how equal the domestic large cities and their agglomeration can be considered by their development and competitiveness, and if there is an economic basis for them to cooperate horizontally in a network in the present case. The authors use different methodological approaches to examine the development and competitiveness of cities and their agglomeration, and spatial autocorrelation circumstances to model the economic base of outlined cooperation.

The paper aims at analysing the impact of territorial capital endowment on the economic growth process measured by exports and employment growth for the 103 italian provinces over the period 1999-2012. A broader concept of territorial capital has been used (Camagni, 2009) which takes into account goods and services on the basis of different degrees of appropriability and rivalry (public or private) and of the material or non-material physical content. Our goal is to identify strategic elements of territorial capital that might help to enhance the absorption capacity of provinces or macro-areas in the most recent recession and the possibility of resilience in the future. By making use of a very large data set on Italian provinces consisting of more than 30 indicators of territorial capital, we firstly estimate a 3-periods panel growth model for exports and a 2-periods for employment (due to restrictions on data availability). The model takes into account the differential role of terr...

Procedia Economics and Finance, 2015

Territorial inequalities represent a long-running subject in regional economics and many statistical methods aiming to provide relevant data and information on the magnitude and evolution of disparities have been developed over time. It is a topic of interest in Romania as well, given that the development gaps among counties continuously increased since the transition to market economy, despite many strategies explicitly targeting them. In this context, the paper introduces a new synthetic index of territorial inequalities that includes three variables: GDP/capita, labour productivity and life expectancy in order to capture various aspects of economic and social spatial disparities. This methodological approach offers a better and more complex image on territorial development gaps, compared to the analyses using individual indicators. We further assessed the impact of territorial disparities (as measured by this synthetic index) on the economic development in Romania over 1995-2012, by means of an economic growth model. We found a cointegrating relationship between GDP and the synthetic index of territorial inequalities, suggesting that the regional development in Romania is systematically unbalanced and the disparities have had the tendency to widen with economic growth.

Regional Statistics, 2018

This study examines the convergence and catch-up effects of the economic and social (well-being) performance of the NUTS 2 regions of Central and Eastern Europe between 2004 and 2014. The separate management of these two development dimensions is justified by the fact that they have no clear relationship. In the study, the theory of closed economies is abandoned and, thus, the performed regression analyses include spatial interactions and spillover effects. As the applied regressions provide only an average picture about the studied phenomenon, the authors also present the individual paths for each region. The results confirm the theory of absolute convergence for both the economic and social convergence. Thus, regardless of any other explanatory factor, less developed regions tend to converge with the more developed ones. The traditional examinations and those that assess spatiality aspects point to a faster annual convergence rate of well-being, so the two phenomena have different dynamics. This is partly supported by the individual regional catch-up paths. Furthermore, it clearly complements the mathematical-statistical results. The novel results highlight the catching up of the ‘local dimension’ that puts the regions along the two dimensions as ‘catch-up not complete’ and ‘catch-up complete’. The authors’ results suggest a non-parallel way of achieving social and economic cohesion.