Minsk and Budapest, the two capital cities. Selected studies of post-socialist urban geography and ecological problems of urban areas

The official cooperation between the Hungarian and the Belarusian geography began to be outlined in a sunny afternoon of June 2010 in the Minsk building of the Geographic Faculty of the Belarusian State University, four years ago. Then we reviewed the potential frames of cooperation with Professor Ekaterina Antipova. It was supported by the academican Károly Kocsis, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, director of the Geographical Research Institute, and we could also win the support of the dean Ivan Pirozhnik and the academician Vladimir Loginov from the Belarusian State University and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, respectively. This informal cooperation became official in the autumn of 2010 in the frame of the Academic Mobility Agreement Project between the Hungarian and the Belarusian academies of sciences. Since then several publications have appeared about Hungary and Belarus in the geographic journals of both countries, however, this is the first, long awaited, significant common publication. Besides the project-based co-operations like e. g. the EastMig (www.eastmig.mtafki.hu) and the ReSEP-CEE (www.mtafki.hu/ReSEP_CEE_Be.html) supported by the Visegrad Fund, a vivid student exchange program was also launched from the autumn of 2010 between the Geographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Geographic Faculty of the Belarusian State University with the scholarship program of the Visegrad Fund. Later the Department of Economic Geography of the Corvinus University of Budapest, headed by István Tózsa became also an active partner of the cooperation. The publishing expenses of this book are also fully financed by the Department of Economic Geography.

Exchange Rate Policy and Economic Growth after the Financial Crisis in Central and Eastern Europe

In a paper on the effects of the global financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the author reacts to a paper of Åslund (2011) published in the same issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics on the influence of exchange rate policies on the region’s recovery. The author argues that post-crisis corrections in current account deficits in CEE countries do not in themselves signal a return to steady economic growth. Disagreeing with Åslund over the role of loose monetary policy in fostering the region’s economic problems, he outlines a number of competitiveness problems that remain to be addressed in the 10 new EU member states of CEE, along with improvements in framework conditions supporting future macroeconomic growth.