What makes ISAF s/tick: An investigation of the politics of coalition burden-sharing

This paper is interested in conceptualising the often raised issue of over- and under-contributing in coalition operations; that of how and why members of complex coalitions2 may be punching above and below their weight, respectively. To this end, the first section presents a parsimonious baseline assumption regarding what variables may fundamentally inform coalition burden-sharing, to subsequently discuss how much each of these are found to play a role in the Afghanistan context. The second section elaborates on this by assessing the perception and the interpretation of threats by coalition member countries, related to Afghanistan, as this pertains to prioritising other variables within the scheme outlined in the previous section. The third and fourth sections then proceed to examine and further enrich the existing literature on coalition burden-sharing, and provide further insights regarding the operations of the International Security Assistance Force–Afghanistan, and regarding ISAF member-country decisionmaking; the objective here is to generate further refined assumptions, that can permit a preliminary assessment of the phenomenon of uneven burden-sharing in ISAF, complementing the initial baseline expectations.

Impacts of EU Accession on Hungarian Primary and Processed Agricultural Trade

In 2004, Hungary joined the European Union (EU) along with nine other Central and Eastern European Countries, causing several changes in the field of agriculture. One of the major changes was the transformation of national agri-food trade. The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of EU accession on the Hungarian primary and processed agri-food trade, especially considering revealed comparative advantages, by using recent data. Results suggest that EU accession raised the intensity of trade contacts but had a negative impact on trade balance. Nominal values of both exports and imports increased after 2004, however, Hungarian agriculture is increasingly based on raw material export and processed food import. It also turned out that revealed comparative advantages of Hungarian primary agri-food products in EU15 remained almost constant after accession, while comparative advantages of processed agri-food products has been gradually increasing by time and even reached the satisfactory level in some cases. From the policy perspective, it is apparent that there is a need for deeper structural reforms of the Hungarian agricultural and food sector is the future.

A vállalati logisztikai költségek a magyarországi kis- és középvállalkozások körében végzett felmérés tükrében (Corporate logistics costs of the Hungarian small- and medium-sized enterprises)

A cikk a magyarországi kis- és középvállalkozások logisztikai költségeit vizsgálja a nemzetközi kutatások tükrében és a 2009-es közel kétezer hazai KKV-re kiterjedő „Vállalkozások helyzetének felmérése” alapján. A hazai logisztikai költségeket leginkább a vállalatméret és az ágazat befolyásolja. A magyarországi kis- és középvállalkozások ki nem szervezett szállítási és raktározási tevékenységei a hazai fuvarozóknak és raktárszolgáltatóknak jelentős piacbővülést jelenthetnének. Ez azonban csak látens piacbővülés, mivel a hazai KKV-k nem tervezik, hogy szállítási és raktározási tevékenységeiket nagyobb arányban szervezzék ki. Ez részben azzal magyarázható, hogy a feldolgozóipari, mezőgazdasági és kereskedő kis- és középvállalkozások viszonylag nagy arányban tekintik a logisztikát alapvető képességnek. Nemzetközi viszonylatban a magyarországi KKV-k magas logisztikai költségszintekkel szembesülnek, melynek mérséklésével az adminisztrációs terhek csökkentéséhez hasonló megtakarítást lehetne elérni. ____ This article examines total logistics costs and its components of the Hungarian small- and medium-sized enterprises in the light of international researches. It shows that company-size and its sector are the most important drivers of logistics costs and its components according to „Survey of position of enterprises”, which covered nearly 2000 Hungarian SMEs in 2009. It also proves that transport and warehousing demand of the Hungarian SMEs means a significant market growth for national carriers and warehouse providers. It is only a latent growth, because the Hungarian SMEs do not plan to outsource their transport and warehouse activities in a greater extent. The relative high level of logistics as a core competence among processing industry, agriculture and trade SMEs can be a partial explanation to this. The Hungarian small- and medium-sized enterprises face with high logistics costs in international comparison. Its reduction may bring similar savings as reduction of administrative burdens.

Bank financing of Hungarian SMEs: Getting over to credit crisis by state interventions

In this article we aimed to present and analyse the 21st century history of bank financing in the Hungarian small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in the period ranging from 2000 to 2012. The credit products offered by banks and credit unions are the most fundamental means of external financing capable of fulfilling the financing needs of a wide array of SMEs. The conditions of accessing credits and their prices exert a decisive influence on the profitability and business opportunities of SMEs. As a result of economic slowdown SMEs had to face higher interest rates, decreasing credit limits, and bank financing options that became increasingly slowly accessible alongside stricter conditions. Due to this process SMEs business performance had been falling continuously which has a destructive contribution to the national economy. In the first chapter of the article we present the dynamic development of credit financing in the Hungarian SME sector, along with the causes that triggered it, then we will continue with the negative tendencies dating from the onset of the 2008 debt crisis. In the second chapter we discuss the vicious circle, due to which the business performance of the SMEs, as well as the conditions of access to credits and their prices, have entered into a negative spiral. In the third and final chapter we make suggestions regarding the direction and means of necessary government intervention, in order to stop and reverse the negative tendencies observed in SME credit financing.