An economic downturn boosts demand for fiscal rebalancing. It can come either in the form of increased revenues or as spending cuts. Extra revenues can be generated in two major ways: 1) increasing traditional forms of taxes or 2) hitherto unknown, or unorthodox revenue raising, special taxes and levies. Latter was especially dominant in the case of Hungary.

Pension costs are a considerable expenditure of every government and are not sustainable in their present form. The crisis has brought it to attention – but arguably not to the degree it would necessitate. Structural changes to the pension systems are thus rare and hard to come by.

Resume: The economic and political crisis of 2008-2010 has had an unexpected impact by calling into question the success of the third wave of democratization in Europe.

Russia in Global Affairs, 24th September 2011

2 августа 2011
Ласло Лендьел
Государства ЦВЕ: конец иллюзий о золотом веке

Ласло Лендьел – генеральный директор Института финансовых исследований (Будапешт, Венгрия).

Financial Research Working Papers, July 2011 

The article was published in Global Affairs:

The Last Peaceful Days? - Central and Eastern Europe: The End of Illusions about the Golden Age (in Russian: Последние мирные дни?) In: Global Affairs, July-August, 2011 (pp 102-115)

Download: http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/The-Last-Peaceful-Days-15326

Keywords—Eastern Europe, Russia, International Relations, Economic Crisis

co-authors: A. Schubert, M. Schubert                                 International co-authorship is generally thought and often found to have positive effects on the citation rate of scientific publications. We study the effect quantitatively in the example of four major and four medium Hungarian universities. The conclusions may be generalized to other countries of similar international status.

International co-authorship is generally thought and often found to have positive effects on the citation rate of scientific publications. We study the effect quantitatively in the example of four major and two medium Hungarian universities. It was found that the positive effect of international cooperation on citation impact was not limited either to a small set of highly cited papers or a narrow range of highly influential countries, although both the highest cited papers and the "scientific superpowers" had emphatic significance in determining the incremental citation impact values. Although Hungarian institutions are recently mainly encouraged to cooperate with EU partners, the USA and even countries from the Far-East and the Pacific region proved to be successful cooperating partners, as well. The conclusions may be generalized to other countries of similar international status.

Gabor Fodor and the Free Democrats rejected the Gyurcsany package. They were right in grasping that only one sentence of this programme needed to be taken seriously: "If Parliament does not accept this programme, I will resign." The Socialist Party's leaders have now either to support Gyurcsany and his package, or they have to persuade Gyurcsany to resign from the prime minister ship, remaining party leader until the next congress. The second course of events is in the country's interest: a convincing government with a convincing prime minister.

HVG-Online, 2008. szeptember 1.

English version: HVG-Online, 2008.szeptember 11.

Regardless of attempts by protestant German and Catholic Polish bishops to reconcile, regardless of Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw, of Germany's support for Poland's membership of NATO and the EU, there is still no reconciliation, and no Europeanisation. Today, we are further from reconciliation than 20 years ago. And there is no Polish-Russian, German-Czech, Romanian-Hungarian or Slovak-Hungarian reconciliation either, let alone Serb-Croat or Serb-Albanian reconciliation. Endless rounds of new wounds.