Price of unsustainability. Economic impacts of climate change

Global problems, rapid and massive regional changes in the 21st century call for genuine long-term, awareness, planning and well focused actions from both national governments and international organizations. This book wishes to contribute to building an innovative path of strategic views in handling the diverse challenges, and more emphatically, the economic impacts of climate change. Although the contributors of this volume represent several approaches, they all rely on some common grounds such as the costbenefit analysis of mitigation and adaptation, and on the need to present an in-depth theoretical and practical dimension. The research accounted for in this book tried to integrate and confront various types of economics approaches and methods, as well as knowledge from game theory to country surveys, from agricultural adaptation to weather bonds, from green tax to historical experience of human adaptation. The various themes and points of views do deserve the attention of the serious academic reader interested in the economics of climate change. We hope to enhance the spread of good solutions resulting from world wide disputes and tested strategic decisions. WAKE UP! It is not just the polar bears' habitat that is endangered, but the entire human form of life.

Online vs. Offline Gossip as a Source of Corporate Communicative Advantage

In a world that may be described by information revolution, it is becoming more and more important to discover the diffusion of information and news in a new technological environment. We are not dependent but, more in control of receiving and forwarding information in this technology driven environment. What we can find is that in today’s interpersonal communications, even corporate communications, gossip-like information gain a more important role. Starting from the psychological notion of gossip we asked the question how gossip occurs, evolves and disperses on the internet, what the main criteria of its diffusion and how these maybe taken into service of a company. The power of gossip derives from its biological basis that is communication advantage. The “newsmonger” maybe described with good memory, being up-to-date even in non-gossip like situations. The spread of info is faster and more precise among people with similar professions or of common interest. The content of the gossip adopts to the intellectual level of its audience. We conducted multiple research methods in order to discover about the nature of gossip of corporate interest: content analyses of blogs (N=10) and forums (N=10); online in-depth interviews (N=10); and individual consumer narratives (N=100). Our research shows that companies may lead and use gossip in an online context for their own communication intentions, however, corporate presence in terms of online gossips has to fulfill requirements in order to remain acceptable: that are specific language and place, openness, being direct about expressing intention and origin. In our paper we are going to present our major results and theoretical model

Az IKT-eszközökkel kapcsolatos preferenciák és használatuk előrejelzése (Preferences and usage forecast of ICT tools)

A szerzők ebben a tanulmányukban az információs és kommunikációs technológiai (továbbiakban IKT) eszközök közül az asztali számítógépekkel (desktopok), laptopokkal (notebookok és netbookok), táblagépekkel és okostelefonokkal foglalkoznak. Az IKT-eszközök elterjedtségének vizsgálatánál meghatározó szerepet játszik a technológia jelenléte mellett a társadalom befogadóképessége. A technológia és társadalom kapcsolatát különböző módszerekkel és modellekkel mutatják be, melyek indokolják ezen eszközök növekvő használatának szükségességét. Ebben a tanulmányban a modellekből és a felmérésekből összeállított tényezők beépítésével és az általuk feldolgozott kérdőívek elemzése által kirajzolódnak minták és olyan összefüggések, amelyek magyarázatot adhatnak a különböző eszközhasználat okainak megértésére. _____ In their study the authors deal with the desktop computers (Desktop), laptops (notebooks and netbooks), smartphones and tablet machines among of information and communication technology (hereinafter referred to as ICT) tools. The capacity of society is one of the key elements in the examination of spread of ICT. The relationship between technology and society is presented with different methods and models that are justified by the need for increasing the use of these devices. In this paper such samples and correlations are emerged of the models and surveys, which may explain the reasons for understanding of the different tool use.

The Soft Budget Constraint. An introductory study to volume IV of the Life’s Work series

The author’s ideas on the soft budget constraint (SBC) were first expressed in 1976. Much progress has been made in understanding the problem over the ensuing four decades. The study takes issue with those who confine the concept to the process of bailing out loss-making socialist firms. It shows how the syndrome can appear in various organizations and forms in many spheres of the economy and points to the various means available for financial rescue. Single bailouts do not as such generate the SBC syndrome. It develops where the SBC becomes built into expectations. Special heed is paid to features generated by the syndrome in rescuer and rescuee organizations. The study reports on the spread of the syndrome in various periods of the socialist and the capitalist system, in various sectors. The author expresses his views on normative questions and on therapies against the harmful effects. He deals first with actual practice, then places the theory of the SBC in the sphere of ideas and models, showing how it relates to other theoretical trends, including institutional and behavioural economics and theories of moral hazard and inconsistency in time. He shows how far the intellectual apparatus of the SBC has spread in theoretical literature and where it has reached in the process of “canonization” by the economics profession. Finally, he reviews the main research tasks ahead.