Az egyéni teljesítményértékelési rendszer működésének tapasztalatai a magyar közigazgatásban (Operating experiences of the individual performance appraisal system in the Hungarian public sector)

A tanulmány – egy 2005 végén lefolytatott, országosan reprezentatív kérdőíves felmérés empirikus bázisán – a magyar közigazgatási dolgozók körében 2002-től bevezetett egyéni teljesítményértékelési rendszert vizsgálja. A rendszer egészét tekintve a vizsgálat végkövetkeztetései nem túl rózsásak: az eredmények arra utalnak, hogy a rendszer mint egész nem képes kitűzött fő célját, a munkateljesítmények javítását elérni. Az egyes részrendszerek, szervezettípusok szintjén differenciáltabb eredményeket kapunk, míg a minisztériumokban a rendszer egésze a szándékolttól alapvetően különböző célokat látszik szolgálni, addig a többi szervezettípusnál inkább „csak” a rendszer tökéletlen működéséről beszélhetünk. ____ On the basis of a questionnaire survey of a nationally representative sample of Hungarian civil servants, the study attempts to give a preliminary evaluation of the individual performance assessment system introduced in 2002 throughout the Hungarian civil service. The general conclusion of the analysis is that the performance assessment system is unlikely to reach its goals: its central element, the performance related pay incentives are overly dispersed and, on the average, insignificant in size, meanwhile the objectivity of performance assessments is also questionable. Moreover, comparative analysis of responses from different administrative branches reveals an interesting idiosyncrasy characteristic for central government ministries. Here, the main function of the incentive system seems to be ensuring the labor market competitiveness of the ministries as employers by enabling them to pay higher-than-usual salaries for employees having certain types of expertise.

Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe. An index for measuring a country’s potential to benefit from technology spillovers

In the paper, we construct a composite indicator to estimate the potential of four Central and Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to benefit from productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing sector. Such transfers of technology are one of the main benefits of FDI for the host country, and should also be one of the main determinants of FDI incentives offered to investing multinationals by governments, but they are difficult to assess ex ante. For our composite index, we use six components to proxy the main channels and determinants of these spillovers. We have tried several weighting and aggregation methods, and we consider our results robust. According to the analysis of our results, between 2003 and 2007 all four countries were able to increase their potential to benefit from such spillovers, although there are large differences between them. The Czech Republic clearly has the most potential to benefit from productivity spillovers, while Poland has the least. The relative positions of Hungary and Slovakia depend to some extent on the exact weighting and aggregation method of the individual components of the index, but the differences are not large. These conclusions have important implication both the investment strategies of multinationals and government FDI policies.

Effects of the current financial and economic crisis on the rural landscape as well as the agri-food sector in Europe and Central Asia

This paper reviews the expected effects of the current financial crisis and subsequent recession on the rural landscape, in particular the agri-food sector in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) on the basis of the structure of the rural economy and of different organisations and institutions. Empirical evidence suggests that the crisis has hit the ECA region the hardest. Agriculture contributes about 9% to gross domestic product (GDP) for the ECA region as a whole with 16% of the population being employed in the agricultural sector. As far as the impact of the financial crisis on the agri-food sector is concerned, there are a few interconnected issues: (1) reduction in income elastic food demand and commodity price decline, (2) loss of employment and earnings of rural people working in urban centres, implying also costly labour reallocation, (3) rising rural poverty originating mainly from lack of opportunities in the non-farm sector and a sizable decline of international remittances, (4) tightening of agricultural credit markets, and the (5) collapse of sectoral government support programs and social safety-net measures in many countries. The paper reveals how the crisis hit farming and broader agri-business differently in general and in the ECA sub-regions.

Measuring Benefits of Technology Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

In this paper, we construct a composite indicator to estimate the potential of four Central and Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to benefit from productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing sector. Such transfers of technology are one of the main benefits of FDI for the host country, and should also be one of the main determinants of FDI incentives offered to investing multinationals by governments, but they are difficult to assess ex ante. For our composite index, we use six components to proxy the main channels and determinants of these spillovers. We have tried several weighting and aggregation methods, and we consider our results robust. According to the analysis of our results, between 2003 and 2007 all four countries were able to increase their potential to benefit from such spillovers, although there are large differences between them. The Czech Republic clearly has the most potential to benefit from productivity spillovers, while Poland has the least. The relative positions of Hungary and Slovakia depend to some extent on the exact weighting and aggregation method of the individual components of the index, but the differences are not large. These conclusions have important implications both for the investment strategies of multinationals and government FDI policies.