The information content of Hungarian sovereign CDS spreads

In our paper we present how the Hungarian credit default swap (CDS) market functions, and indicate its position in the global credit derivatives markets. Our primary goals are to glean some information from the CDS spreads about Hungary's credit risk, and to determine the role of the Hungarian sovereign CDS market in different market periods, as well as its long-term relationship with other Hungarian financial markets. Our findings suggest that the Hungarian market has low liquidity compared to the average liquidity of credit derivatives markets. However, relative to the outstanding stock of Hungarian sovereign foreign currency bonds, the daily average turnover of the market and the outstanding stock of Hungarian sovereign CDS contracts at the end of 2007 were substantial, estimated to be around EUR 10-20 million and EUR 7-20 billion respectively. Even though the Hungarian sovereign CDS spread and foreign currency bond credit spread tend to move in tandem in the long run, the two rates may temporarily deviate from one another due to micro structural factors. Hungary's credit risk premium is primarily defined in the Hungarian sovereign CDS market, which means that any new information pertaining to Hungary's credit risk is captured in the CDS spreads first. In contrast, the Hungarian foreign currency bond market is not an effective market, given that foreign currency bond credit spreads merely adjust to the changes of CDS spreads afterwards. During particularly turbulent market periods Hungarian sovereign CDS spreads tend to rise higher than is fundamentally justified

Environmentally sustainable tourism: International and Hungarian relations

Compliance with the principles of sustainability is now a general requirement with respect to any tourism strategy, tourism policy or management. Much has been written about the issue of sustainability and its relationship to tourism management and development. Still, their actual relationship is not always clear, and whilst a number of methodologies profess to be sustainable, there is no clear statement as to how that can be achieved. It is generally accepted, irrespective of the sustainability model used, that there are three key components or strands to sustainability: economic, social and environmental. It is in working towards a balance between the competing demands of all three components that progress towards sustainability can be achieved. One should never forget that in the field of tourism, visitors also have a significant impact on all three strands. For destination management to be sustainable, it needs to address all the economic, social and environmental issues of a particular area. A number of methodologies have been put forward in an attempt to ensure that tourism-related activities are carried out in a sustainable manner. Destination management that follows an accepted process and/or deals effectively with a majority of the key components can be considered sustainable. An action plan or process that does not clearly address the core components of economic, social and environmental well-being or does not pursue a majority of the process components identified in the process framework document presented on the website is unlikely to have sustainability as a core principle. ---------------------------------------- A turisztikai stratégiákra, turizmuspolitikára vagy menedzsmentre vonatkozóan jelenleg már általánosan elvárt igény a fenntarthatóság figyelembe vétele. Bár a legtöbb megközelítés általánosságban foglalkozik a kérdéssel, a kapcsolat és a célok elérhetÅ‘sége nem mindig világos. Ãltalánosan elfogadott, hogy a fenntarthatóság három kulcseleme jelölhetÅ‘ ki: gazdasági, társadalmi és környezeti. Ezek arányainak figyelembevételével közelíthetünk eredményesen a fenntarthatósági célok irányába. Mindenképpen figyelembe kell venni, hogy a turizmusban a látogatónak mind a három tényezÅ‘re hatása van. A desztináció-menedzsmentben mind a három fÅ‘ tényezÅ‘re erÅ‘s figyelemmel kell lenni. A turisztikai fejlesztéseket és célokat fenntartható módon kell elérni. A desztináció-menedzsmentben tehát ezeket a folyamatokat és kulcselemeket fenntartható módon kell figyelembe venni. Az akcióterveknek és folyamatoknak, illetve magának a turizmusszektor fejlÅ‘désének olyan üteműnek kell lennie, hogy a megvalósulást az adott desztináció képes legyen kedvezÅ‘tlen társadalmi és környezeti változások nélkül befogadni. A fenntarthatóság megteremtésében több innovációs lehetÅ‘ség is áll a turizmus elÅ‘tt termékinnováció: új, a környezeti elveket figyelembe vevÅ‘ turisztikai termékek kialakítása, pl. ökotúrák; folyamat-innováció: melyben a szolgáltatások, tevékenységek működési folyamatait alakítják át a környezetet kevésbé terhelÅ‘ technológiákra; menedzsment-innováció: amelyben a vállalkozások és szervezetek munkatársaikat, a helyi lakosságot és a turistákat is bevonják a környezetet kevésbé terhelÅ‘ lehetÅ‘ségek megteremtésébe. Ebben a komplexitásban a Fenntarthatósági Érték Térkép/Modell egy nagyon elÅ‘nyösen használható módszer a turizmus területi és létesítményi tervezésében Magyarországon és külföldön egyaránt.tourism, sustainable development, environment, turizmus, fenntartható fejlÅ‘dés, környezet, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Inside Job. First-person Documentary in Trauma Cinema: "Balkan Champion" (2006)

Owing to the disappearance of grand narratives in postmodernism, contemporary documentary has become concerned with personal and collective historical traumas. This paper focuses on the documentary filmmaker’s challenge concerning the treatment of traumatic experience and the re-construction of historical events. It examines the filmmaker’s position in her own film and her attitude towards her subjects in documentaries on historical and personal trauma in the framework of a case study. The film analysed is Balkan Champion (2006), which launched a new trend in Hungarian documentary cinema, touching on sensitive issues in the collective memory of the nation that include the striking, controversial involvement of the fi lmmaker herself. Réka Kincses has made an empathic but highly critical portrait of her own father, the one-time political leader of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania, which evolved into a portrait of the interethnic conflicts between Romanians and Hungarians, and the political confl icts arising from the Eastern European transition from communist dictatorship to democracy, as well as their traumatic consequences on the life of an ethnic Hungarian family in Romania. Th e fi lmmaker not only confronts her father with his own failure both as a politician and a father, but also challenges her mother’s chauvinism and careerism. The parents’ opinion about and emotional reactions to the Romanian ethnic majority represent the long-term eff ect of the historical trauma of the treaty of Versailles (1921) and the wounds this left  on the collective psyche of the Hungarian nation. A close analysis demonstrates that, on the one hand, the filmmaker’s first-person interactive techniques helped to reveal the repeated ideological, behavioural and emotional patterns rooted in the historical traumas of Hungarian ethnic minority groups in Romania; on the other hand, these techniques prove to be controversial due to the director’s constant shifting between positions outside and inside her own family and her refusal to take the responsibility that the inside position would involve

Explaining bond and equity premium puzzles jointly in a DSGE model

We introduce costly firm-entry a la Bilbiie et al. (2012) into a New Keynesian model with Epstein-Zin preferences and show that it can jointly account for a high mean value of bond and equity premium without compromising the fit of the model to first and second moments of key macroeconomic variables. In the standard New Keynesian model without entry it is easy to generate inflation risks on long-term nominal bonds when placing high coefficient on the output gap in the Taylor rule. Our model is able to generate inflation risks when the coefficient on the output gap is small. In the entry model real risks are lower and inflation risks are ceteris paribus higher than in the standard New Keynesian model without entry due to the appearance of new varieties that help households smooth their consumption better

Fiscal Policy and the Nominal Term Premium

Distortionary income taxation in a standard New Keynesian model substantially increases the nominal term-premium on long-term bonds relative to a model with lumpsum taxes. Also the empirical level of the nominal term premium can be matched with lower risk-aversion coefficient in case of a model with income taxes relative to a model with long-run inflation risks

Multiscale modeling of biomolecular systems

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on February 14, 2008)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.Studies of structure-function relationships in biomolecular systems require to follow nanometersize systems on time scales spanning from pico- to micro-seconds, while maintaining atomic scale spatial resolution in all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In this work we propose new methods to investigate the following, intrinsically multiscale problems: (i) theoretical prediction of optical and spectral properties of pigment-protein complexes, (ii) reconstruction of potential of mean force and its corresponding diffusion coefficient from non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, (iii) transport of potassium ion through the Gramicidin A channel and of glycerol through the GlpF channel, and (iv) prediction of the species-dependent oligomerization state of the light harvesting antenna complexes. The main novelty of these methods is that they rely only on the high resolution atomic structure of the biomolecular system. Therefore, they have not only explanatory, but predictive power as well.Includes bibliographical reference

ENVIRONMENTALISM AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TOURISM

As a consequence of the rapid growth of the tourism sector, special emphasis is placed on destinations and tourism products connected to or based on certain physical and environmental factors. However, the negative environmental consequences of tourism are, in many cases, overemphasised to the social and/or economic elements of sustainable development. Thus, it is important to find an adequate balance of the elements mentioned above within tourism development in order to achieve an optimal way of fulfilling all requirements of sustainable development. In order to this, a potential method is introduced by applying the Sustainability Value Map, developed originally for buildings and urban development projects, to the evaluation of sustainable tourism products. This method implies further questions arisen concerning the selection of the right set of indicators and the importance of local or regional issues. Using it as a tool, it may promote the process of holistic tourism planning and development.environmentalism, sustainable tourism, environmental impacts, sustainability value map

Du noir pour tout le monde

Le polar est un genre immortel… Il réveille chez le jeune lecteur un mécanisme personnel, intime, utile, dont on a besoin. La fantasy l’a chassé ? Il revient au galop… après quelques tours de piste qu’Annick Lorant-Jolly a suivis pour nous

Evaluating Partnerships to Enhance Disaster Risk Management using Multi-Criteria Analysis: An Application at the Pan-European Level

Disaster risk is increasingly recognized as a major development challenge. Recent calls emphasize the need to proactively engage in disaster risk reduction, as well as to establish new partnerships between private and public sector entities in order to decrease current and future risks. Very often such potential partnerships have to meet different objectives reflecting on the priorities of stakeholders involved. Consequently, potential partnerships need to be assessed on multiple criteria to determine weakest links and greatest threats in collaboration. This paper takes a supranational multi-sector partnership perspective, and considers possible ways to enhance disaster risk management in the European Union by better coordination between the European Union Solidarity Fund, risk reduction efforts, and insurance mechanisms. Based on flood risk estimates we employ a risk-layer approach to determine set of options for new partnerships and test them in a high-level workshop via a novel cardinal ranking based multi-criteria approach. Whilst transformative changes receive good overall scores, we also find that the incorporation of risk into budget planning is an essential condition for successful partnerships