The crisis of the state approach to Latin America
The protracting Latin American crisis that erupted in the early eighties has two interpretations: the official "Washington system of views" with neoliberal roots and the social democratic "fiscal crisis approach". Both agree in that the Latin American state organizations are overdimensioned, interventionist and inclined to populism, thus, beside stabilization also market reforms are needed. But also a difference in opinions can be found between these two approaches as regards both the causes of the crisis and its averting. The social democratic approach, also represented by the author, reckons with the international components of the crisis (the debt problem), while criticizing the concept of the "minimal state". But the state can become capable of taking action only if it solves the budget crisis. The budget needs to obtain resources without raising further loans and without an inflationary tax, and the resources have to be spent first of all on promoting growth and not on the payment of interests. This is why it has to reduce the external and internal state debt and break the tradition which almost excludes the taxation of the rich.
The impact of budgetary outlays on supply
The macroeconomic analysis of economic development in Hungary over the last 34 years convincingly proves that the real relations of the economy leave such narrow room of manoeuvring for economic policy which does not allow the enforcing of longterm goals. This is why the programmes setting the goal of shortterm survival always come unavoidably to the fore. But the shortterm constraining programmes doom the economy to "marking time" because they do not create the conditions of shifting unto a genuine growth path. Such economic policy would thus be needed which, on the one hand, does not further deteriorate the anyway unstable equilibrium position and, on the other hand, secures a chance for breaking out of the vicious circle of "restraintconsumption tensionsliberalizationdisequilibriumrestraint". The author attempts to outline such a possibility by presenting the supplystimulating effect of budgetary outlays.
Utility and typicality. Do they really differ from each other?
The model builders bring about from the preference relation summing up several axioms utility functions with the aid of the representation thesis. Both utility and preference are tools of modelbuilding, abstracts notions, which sum up the mechanism of consumer decision in the possible most concise manner. But the researches of consumer behaviour are interested precisely in the explanation of the preferences hidden behind this process. According to the results of categorization research - only known since a few decades and building on the results of linguistics, anthropology and psychology - the mental representations of "things" form hierarchically divided systems of categories in the heads of people. In fact, even these categories possess an internal structure which can be well described with the aid of the notion of (proto)typicality. The study sets two goals. First, it wishes to call attention to the analogies between the notions typicality and utility, providing thereby a socalled external validity for the theory of utility. Second, it wants to instruct modelbuilders which version of the utility theory they should choose in different modeling situations.
Endogeneous theory of growth: a review
Analysis of the factors determining economic growth is one of the oldest themes of economies. This is why it is important to know in what direction theoretical researches make progress in this field. In the last ten years growth theory has undergone essential changes. The earlier neoclassical paradigm has been replaced by a new, socalled endogeneous theory of growth. The. study briefly reviews the changes having taken place in growth theory. Relying on a comparison of the "old" and "new" theories we may state that, in spite of the many similarities, there are significant differences between the two approaches. The study presents the basic differences and reviews the most important theoretical results.
Műhely
Cost returns on education in Hungary
The study examines how the individual and societal cost return rates developed in individual stages of education as well as the support given to acquiring certain qualifications in 1971,1986 and 1993. The results show that the individual cost returns of acquiring skilled worker qualification did practically not change between 1971 and 1993, while in secondary education they almost doubled and in higher education rose to three and a halffold. The societal return rates changed in a different way in the same period. Higher education showed throughout the lowest returns, while secondary education the highest ones - significant even by international comparison. The changes in the relative proportions of the individual and the societal return rates testify to the fact that the growing individual returns on higher education can be explained not merely by the greater demand for people with higher qualification, but also by the growing budgetary support given to acquiring such qualification.
The human conditions of the second modernization
The study wishes to contribute to the development of such an approach and a practice being in harmony with it which - as against the prevailing views - would also treat the human potential of society as an economic factor. The prevailing approach considers the human sphere as the object of political, ideological, cultural and perhaps of social considerations. It only considers the human sphere as an economic factor only insofar as (e.g. in the present phase) it states that its administration sucks away means from the economic sphere and then calculates how this sucking could be reduced. The approach and practice the author advocates against the former one is that the human potential should be treated as a resource, the production, allocation, maintenance, exportimport and yields of which demand and allow the same real economic efficiency computations as those of material resources.
Szemle
Transition to market economy in Hungary compared to that in Central Eastern Europe in general
In the five years passed since the collapse of the socialist system Hungary has made great progress in bringing about a market economy based on private property. Yet it could not avoid the deep economic recession in spite of having chosen the strategy of gradual transition. In the first years of transformation (between 1990 and 1992) the decline was caused not so much by the financial but rather by the fiscal policy and other factors. Later, however, beside the mistakes made in economic policy, also the impact of monetary policy strengthened and affected recession. Nevertheless, the decline has not had until now such grave impacts on living standards as was the case in Poland and Czechoslovakia.