Alcohol misuse has been a persistent challenge in Hungary, and the COVID 19 pandemic intensified the complexities of how people respond to collective stress. This study offers several new insights into the problem. First, drawing on a nationally representative survey of Hungarian adults, we move beyond broad patterns to pinpoint which demographic and social factors most influenced alcohol consumption during the pandemic. The analysis shows that increased drinking was more common among older adults and women, and among those experiencing financial hardship, while caregiving responsibilities (children under 14 in the household) were associated with a greater likelihood of increase rather than protection. Second, this research deepens understanding by applying Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values in combination with a Heckman selection model. This approach distinguishes not only who drinks, but also how intrinsic values shape drinking behaviour under stress. Disaggregating the ten basic values reveals that Power (status/dominance) was a robust predictor of increased alcohol use across models; Achievement (competence/goal attainment) showed a modest protective tendency; and Hedonism, net of thrill seeking and status, was negatively associated with escalation. In contrast, social focus values (e.g., benevolence, universalism, tradition) did not consistently predict change once other values and covariates were considered....

The aim of this study is to estimate the influence of climate factors on the technical efficiency of Hungarian arable farms. The technical efficiency of farms is affected by several factors such as the technology used, the relative factor abundance, the institutional reforms with the input and output market environment, the farm size and scale economies, the organisation and management, and the farm’s specialisation. We employed a two-step approach to identify the impact of climate change on the efficiency of these farms. In the first step, using the Data Envelopment Analysis model, we calculated the efficiency (dependent variable in the second stage of analysis) of these processes. In the second step, we investigated the effect of climate and soil factors (independent variables) on efficiency by applying the Simar and Wilson (2007) approach. In this way we can assess the impacts of matched environmental variables through a robust, representative dataset for Hungary. Our results show that temperature and precipitation increases had statistically significant, positive effects on the technical efficiency of farms in the seeding and vegetative periods in both the constant and variable returns to scale models, and temperature increase during the generative phase of crop production had a negative effect...

In this paper, we employ a novel, network analysis based approach to gain new insights with respect to the changes in the structure of intra-European Union (EU) milk product trade between 2001 and 2012. Several network indices are computed to assess the relative importance of the countries from a number of perspectives. The results emphasise that the trade network has become denser, yet its overall centralisation slightly decreased during the period. While the impacts of the 2004 EU enlargement are clearly visible, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are less evident. Integration of countries that joined the EU in 2004 or 2007 (the so-called New Member States, NMS) is only partial, and depends on the category of milk product considered. Although the number of NMS trade relations increased constantly between 2001 and 2012, the relative importance of most of them did not change. A significant exception is Poland, which became one of the most important exporting countries.

International trade theory suggests that advanced trade integration may lead to higher levels of intra-industry trade (IIT). The enlargement of the European Union (EU) during last decade is as a good example for which to analyse the IIT in agri-food products. The aim of the paper is to analyse the pattern and drivers of horizontal IIT within the EU between 1999 and 2010. Previous empirical studies fail to provide an exact link between the theory and the data. Thus, a new empirical strategy developed to test the predictions of Helpman and Krugman (1985) model is employed. At the country level, Belgium, France, Netherlands and Germany report the highest levels of IIT within the EU. The calculations mainly support Cieslik’s (2005) proposal to find the missing link between empirics and theory of IIT. In addition, the results are robust to alternative subsamples.

The 27 European Union (EU) Member States increased their total agri-food exports during the period 2000-2011. However, despite agri-food exports having grown, the shares of the world agri-food markets of 13 EU Member States and the EU-27 as a whole have declined. Those with increasing market share are mainly among the Eastern EU Member States. Constant market share analysis by 27 EU Member States suggests that the structural effects in agri-food and dairy exports are more important than the residual and second order effects. The declining market share is largely associated with negative residual and second order effects. Large positive structural effects cannot compensate for the impact of negative residual and second order effects and this results in declining agri-food market shares.