While in the decade prior to 2010 Hungarian local governments had been a notorious contributor to budgetary slippages and growing public indebtedness, the sector’s balance has subsequently turned to positive in the context of a wide-ranging centralisation effort and the corresponding revamp in subnational financing arrangements. The fiscal indicators therefore, prima facie, point to a transformation of a regular sinner into a source of stability. Based on a detailed account of the recent reform steps and the preliminary assessment of their first impacts, this study argues that it is too early to conclude that the observed positive developments are the structural results of the measures taken over the last five years. The enacted institutional streamlining, the new debt authorisation rule and the increased tapping of the local tax potential should all have a lasting positive impact on public finances. Nonetheless, the intended efficiency gains due to economies of scale in service provision are not yet apparent, insofar as no reduction has been achieved in the headcount of the concerned branches. Moreover, the observed non-differentiation in the debt assumption may raise the spectre of moral hazard for the municipalities in the longer run.
In April 2003, the EU Accession Agreement was officially signed for the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. These countries are destined to become EU members in May 2004. As part of the “acquis communautaire”, participation in the new version of the exchange rate mechanism (ERM II), and subsequently in the European Monetary Union (EMU) is obligatory for all new EU members (no opt-out clause is available). Therefore, the question today for the accession countries is no longer whether or not to enter the eurozone but rather the time horizon when the entry should happen.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) code: E42, E58, F33.
A tanulmány az európai Gazdasági és Monetáris Unió politikai vonatkozásait járja körbe. Megvizsgálja miképpen magyarázható a monetáris politika létrejötte a tradicionális integrációs elméletek segítségével, valamint azt is, hogy a politikai egyesülés kérdésére milyen válasz vezethető le belőlük. A következőkben áttekinti, hogy az EMU előfutárának tartott Werner-tervből milyen tapasztalatok szűrhetők le a monetáris unió későbbi alakulását illetően - az optimális valutaövezetek elméletének fényében. Külön kitér az európai szintű fiskális föderializmus kialakítását övező szakmai polémiára is. A sokszor lebecsült gazdasági hatóerők rehabilitása jegyében a Mundell-Fleming modell segítségével illusztrálja a monetáris unió mögött meghúzódó közgazdasági összefüggéseket, amelyek bizonyos mértékig szembeszállnak a mindent a politikai megfontolásokra visszavezető vélekedésekkel.
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