A megnyilvánult és kinyilvánított időpreferenciák - mennyire vagyunk rövidlátóak?

A társadalmi időpreferenciák vizsgálatához két út áll rendelkezésünkre; a megnyilvánult és a kinyilvánított időpreferenciák vizsgálata. A megnyilvánult preferenciák egyfajta top-down módszertan, vagyis a társadalmi időpreferenciákat makroadatokból számítják ki (pl. megtakarítások, jövedelemrugalmasság, gazdasági növekedés stb.) és vonnak le következtetéseket az emberek preferenciáival kapcsolatosan. Egy másik lehetséges módszer a diszkontráta meghatározásához a kinyilvánított preferenciák megfigyelése, illetve ami azt jelenti, hogy felmérések útján hipotetikus szituációkon át mérjük fel az egyén preferenciáit [Lippai, 2009], vagyis ez esetben egy bottom-up módszertant alkalmazunk.

Designing Lifestyle-specific Food Policies Based on Nutritional Requirements and Ecological Footprints.

Expanded understanding of the trends and determinants of food consumption is needed to reduce the ecological impacts of the contemporary agro-food system while also being attentive to broader issues pertaining to health and the environment. Incorporating these additional aspects and formulating meaningful dietary recommendations is a major challenge. This article seeks to highlight differences in ecological footprint (EF) by activity level for various so-cial groups to meet suggested physiological requirements by nutritionists versus actual food consumption. The study is based on a combination of healthy diet requirements (as expressed by national guidelines) and a survey of a repre-sentative sample of 1,013 Hungarian adults using a bottom-up approach for calculating EFs. Students and women with small children have a higher than average food-related EF due to their higher nutritional needs. At the same time, the elderly are characterized by lower footprints. Perhaps most interesting is our finding that people with seden-tary forms of employment have higher food footprints than those with jobs that require physical labor. We offer rec-ommendations for food-policy planning based on encouraging dietary changes for individuals, differentiated by the nature of their work. The research suggests that dietary policy that improves health often has environmental benefits.

Content and drivers of performance management in agency-type organizations of the hungarian public administration

The improving performance of public administration and the reform of public financing system have been on agenda in Hungary for many years, in accordance with the international trends. However, governments have not expected and supported creating of a performance-oriented public administration in a comprehensive and explicit way. Nevertheless, there are bottom-up initiatives at organizational level, which target performance-oriented organizational function. The research focuses on organizations of central public administration where the successful application of performance management methods is most likely based on the international literature. These are the so called agency-type organizations, which are in Hungary called autonomous state-administration organizations independent of the Government (e.g. Hungarian Competition Authority), government bureaus (e.g. Hungarian Central Statistical Office), and central offices subordinated to the government (either the cabinet or a ministry) (e.g. Hungarian Meteorological Service). The studied agencies are legally independent organizations with managerial autonomy based on public law. The purpose of this study is to get an overview on organizational level performance management tools applied by Hungarian agencies, and to reveal the reasons and drivers of the application of these tools. The empirical research is based on a mixed methods approach which combines both quantitative methods and qualitative procedures. The first – quantitative – phase of the author’s research was content analysis of homepages of the studied organizations. As a results she got information about all agencies and their practice related to some performance management tools. The second – qualitative – phase was based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews with some senior managers of agencies. The author selected the interviewees based on the results of the first phase, the relatively strong performance orientation was an important selection criteria.