The starting point of our research is Piketty (2014) who follows Marx by asserting that rents are merely one of the forms of profits, therefore they do not require separate conceptual analysis and statistical separation. Speaking of the generation of rents (as a distinctly different mechanism...

In the former socialist redistributive economies, the transition to market economy and the conversion to private ownership followed different trajectories. The paper offers an overview on how a new class of grand bourgeoisie was formed in three different regions of the transition: Central...

This extended book review of Creating a Learning Society by Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald (2014) looks at the 700-page long scholarly work from a transition economy perspective. Using as a starting point Arrow's renowned concept of "learning by doing", the authors throw away the doctrines...

One of the intriguing questions of our times is the importance of the centralization and nationalization campaigns of the 2nd and 3rd Orbán-government carried out since 2010. In an earlier working paper - Mihalyi (2015) - I demonstrated that similar policy steps were occasionally taken in other...

This study is a natural continuation of the author’s earlier book on privatization in Hungary, covering the developments between 1989 and 2009 on 1700 pages. As it is well-known, the right wing FIDESZ government, which came to power with a 2/3 supermajority in Parliament, has embarked upon a...

The Hungarian oil company (MOL) and the national electricity holding (MVM) counted as the largest socialist enterprises already 30 years ago. Prior to 1990, they were roughly of the same size in respect of sales and employment, as well. Since the regime change, however, their development paths...