A Theory of Natural Addiction

Economic theories of rational addiction aim to describe consumer behavior in the presence of habit-forming goods. We provide a biological foundation for this body of work by formally specifying conditions under which it is optimal to form a habit. We demonstrate the empirical validity of our thesis with an in-depth review and synthesis of the biomedical literature concerning the action of opiates in the mammalian brain and their eects on behavior. Our results lend credence to many of the unconventional behavioral assumptions employed by theories of rational addiction, including adjacent complementarity and the importance of cues, attention, and self-control in determining the behavior of addicts. We oer evidence for the special case of the opiates that "harmful" addiction is the manifestation of a mismatch between behavioral algorithms encoded in the human genome and the expanded menu of choices faced by consumers in the modern world.

A gazdasági válság hatása a vállalati stratégiákra – Magyar és szlovák tapasztalatok (Influence of the economic crisis on corporate strategy – Experiences in Hungary and Slovakia)

A tanulmány a jelenlegi gazdasági válság jellemzőit a vállalatok szintjén elemzi, továbbá vizsgálja annak következményeit a válság utáni lehetséges növekedésre. A tanulmány támaszkodik a nemzetközi szakirodalomban tárgyalt tapasztalatokra a válságokból való kilábalás példái alapján, amelyek a korábbi – 1980 és 2002 közötti – válságok során jelentkeztek. Magyarországi és szlovákiai empirikus vizsgálati tapasztalatok ismertetésére kerül sor arra vonatkozóan, hogy miként reagáltak a vállalatok a jelenlegi gazdasági recesszióra. A tanulmány elemzi a magyar és a szlovák vállalatok által a válság alatt követett stratégiák hatását a kereslet megélénkülése esetén adódó növekedési lehetőségek kihasználása szempontjából. A tanulmány illusztrációként bemutatja egy innovatív szlovákiai internetszolgáltató vállalat példáját. _______ The paper analyses the characteristics of the economic crisis at the level of companies, and the consequences for possibilities of growth after the crisis. The authors build on the experiences discussed in international literature concerning recovery after the previous crises between 1980 and 2002. The paper summarizes the empirical research findings on enterprise level reactions to the present economic recession. The focus of analysis is connected to the question of inluence of strategies on capabilities for realizing the growth options after the crisis. The paper – as an illustrative example – describes the strategic behaviour of an innovativ internet service company in Slovakia.

Comparison of Explicit and Implicit Methods of Cross-Cultural Learning in an International Classroom

The paper addresses a gap in the literature concerning the difference between enhanced and not enhanced cross-cultural learning in an international classroom. The objective of the described research was to clarify if the environment of international classrooms could enhance cross-cultural competences significantly enough or if additional focus on cross-cultural learning as an explicit objective of learning activities would add substantially to the experience. The research question was defined as “how can a specific exercise focused on cross-cultural learning enhance the cross-cultural skills of university students in an international classroom?”. Surveys were conducted among interna- tional students in three leading Central-European Universities in Lithuania, Poland and Hungary to measure the increase of their cross-cultural competences. The Lithuanian and Polish classes were composed of international students and concentrated on International Management/Business topics (explicit method). The Hungarian survey was done in a general business class that just happened to be international in its composition (implicit method). Overall, our findings prove that the implicit method resulted in comparable, somewhat even stronger effectiveness than the explicit method. The study method included the analyses of students’ individual increases in each study dimension and construction of a compound measure to note the overall results. Our findings confirm the power of the international classroom as a stimulating environment for latent cross-cultural learning even without specific exercises focused on cross-cultural learning itself. However, the specific exercise did induce additional learning, especially related to cross-cultural awareness and communication with representatives of other cultures, even though the extent of that learning may be interpreted as underwhelming. The main conclusion from the study is that the diversity of the students engaged in a project provided an environment that supported cross-cultural learning, even without specific culture-focused reflections or exercises.