Publication

The Economic Competition Office?s role in shaping market structure

According to economic arguments, the monopolized enterprise structure inherited from the planned economy acts as an obstacle of market competition, so many of the big, artificially created state-owned firms have to be broken up. The state, through the Economic Competition Office as ?guardian? of competition, has to play an active role in this process. The logic is clear, but it was a matter of dispute both theoretically and in practice. The article presents the theoretical dilemmas of demonopolization that appeared during transformation. It shows the attempts to resolve them through competition regulation and the decisions of the Competition Office. The author concludes that the main role in building up competitive market structure was not played by the Competition Office, which declined the task to revise the inherited structure and to oppose several privatization decisions, considering these issues economically and politically sensitive. On the other hand, most mergers and takeovers connected with privatization were simply permitted not in contradiction with the law but sometimes by inconsistent reasoning.

Közgazdasági Szemle ? Economic Review, LI. évf., 2004. January pp.1 - 23.

The book "Nanotechnology and Microelectronics: Global Diffusion, Economics and Policy" received IGI Global 2010 Excellence in Technology Research 'Book of the Year' Award. In that book the chapter Collaborations in the Open Innovation Era ( pp. 61-86) is written by Annamária Inzelt (IKU-Innovatoin Research Centre/Financial Research Ltd, Hungary)

abstract

Under planned economy, large state-owned enterprises used to enjoy considerable privileges and protection. They had to keep negotiating with the government for allocations and benefits, but their bargaining position was grounded in their central role in production, exports and employment, and supported by close relations with the administrative bodies of the governing party. The weakening of the old political system in the late 1980s resulted in the shaken position of formerly privileged firms. The threat of a crisis elicited a variety of responses: some enterprises adopted a strategy of wait-and-see, others tried to involve foreign investment, while a third group changed their organizational structure. During 1988 and 1989, more than a hundred enterprises transformed themselves into one or more companies. This process is known in Hungary as "spontaneous privatization."
This paper is one of the case studies of a research project, undertaken by Financial Research Ltd., focusing on transformation into company form as crisis management and its result, namely on the effect of corporate forms on the chances for privatization to succeed. We use the case of Ganz Danubius Ship and Crane Works (GD) to illustrate the alternatives and motivations of the parties concerned, their negotiations, the changes of the positions of shareholders and managers and the role of direct and indirect state control. The sources of information were the former investigations at GD, the study of enterprise documents and numerous interviews with managers and representatives of owners.

Industrial and Environmental Crisis Quarterly, Vol. 8. (1994) No. 1. 23-41.

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.

Lecture by János Atkári at a Conference on Municipal Reform by Pénzügykutató Rt. and CIB Bank, december, 2006

The lecture aims at a structural approach to a desirable reform of the self-government system in Hungary, touching on some basic elements.

December 2006, Budapest

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.

The relationship between privatisation and competition

The expansion of the two essential elements of economic transition, private ownership and competition, do not necessarily reinforce one other and they may even come into conflict. In Hungarian practice, privatisation was given priority over improvement in the market structure, though but not in a professed or institutionalised manner. Even in the 1990s, a decisive and consistent demonopolisation policy was lacking. Procedures were unregulated and there were no clear criteria for making decisions. By analysing the colourful palette of the organisational changes, the article demonstrates that demonopolisation was mainly an unintended consequence or side-effect of individual deals and of the government?s short-term power or fiscal considerations.

Külgazdaság, 2003 Volume 11, pp. 4-23