Katalin Czakó

This study investigates the determinants of credit growth in Western Balkan countries over the period 2011-2023, assessing whether lending dynamics are driven by macroeconomic fundamentals or financial sector conditions. The analysis focuses on key variables, including GDP growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), inflation, and lending interest rates. Using a balanced panel dataset, the study employs pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), fixed and random effects models, and a twoway fixed effects specification with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors to address cross-sectional dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. The empirical results show that lending interest rates exert a statistically significant negative effect on credit growth, indicating that financial conditions play a central role in constraining lending activity. In contrast, GDP growth and inflation are not found to be significant determinants, challenging conventional macro-financial expectations. FDI becomes significant only when introduced in a lagged specification, suggesting a delayed transmission mechanism through which external capital inflows influence credit expansion. The study contributes to the literature by providing comparative multi-country evidence from structurally constrained and bank-dominated financial systems. The findings suggest that credit growth is driven less by traditional macroeconomic factors and more by financial sector conditions and institutional characteristics. These results have important policy implications, highlighting the need to strengthen financial intermediation efficiency and credit transmission mechanisms rather than relying solely on macroeconomic expansion to stimulate lending.

This study investigates the determinants of credit growth in Western Balkan countries over the period 2011–2023, assessing whether lending dynamics are driven by macroeconomic fundamentals or financial sector conditions. The analysis focuses on key variables, including GDP growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), inflation, and lending interest rates. Using a balanced panel dataset, the study employs pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), fixed and random effects models, and a two-way fixed effects specification with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors to address cross-sectional dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. The empirical results show that lending interest rates exert a statistically significant negative effect on credit growth, indicating that financial conditions play a central role in constraining lending activity. In contrast, GDP growth and inflation are not found to be significant determinants, challenging conventional macro-financial expectations. FDI becomes significant only when introduced in a lagged specification, suggesting a delayed transmission mechanism through which external capital inflows influence credit expansion. The study contributes to the literature by providing comparative multi-country evidence from structurally constrained and bank-dominated financial systems. The findings suggest that credit growth is driven less by traditional macroeconomic factors and more by financial sector conditions and institutional characteristics. These results have important policy implications, highlighting the need to strengthen financial intermediation efficiency and credit transmission mechanisms rather than relying solely on macroeconomic expansion to stimulate lending.

The touristic use of sacred sites is a widespread practice in Hungary. Throughout the past centuries, Christianity has dominated the history of the Carpathian Basin. The Hungarian State’s strong affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church dates back to its foundation over a 1000 years ago. Due to its location on the shore of Lake Balaton and outstanding natural environment, the Benedictine Tihany Abbey is a major touristic destination and a popular place of pilgrimage in Hungary. The objective of the present paper is to examine how touristic activities contribute to the livelihood of a Hungarian monastic community and local economic development in the 21st century. To answer the research questions, the study primarily relied on literature and documentary analysis, in-depth interviews, and the construction and processing of a database. The research revealed that in addition to the classic elements (e.g., guided tours in the abbey, museum exhibitions, concerts, etc.), the program offer developed by the monastic community of Tihany is capable of addressing new target audiences: the rapidly rising number of tourists from the Far East (mainly Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia). Despite remaining considerably below visitor numbers recorded by the abbey in the mid-1990s, a significant increase in visitor numbers was observed in 2018–2019. The economic activities of the Benedictines of Tihany comprise a number of different areas beyond tourism, e.g., agricultural production and candle making, both of which are integrated into their tourism offer and feature among touristic programs. As a major employer, the abbey exerts a positive impact on the population retention capacity of the settlement by offering jobs to local residents, and it also contributes to population growth by attracting a large number of highly skilled professionals who choose to settle down in the region. The paper shows the evidence of the pandemic on pilgrimage and religious tourism in Tihany.

Universities have undergone a profound transformation to increase their competitiveness and research performance; evaluating their research output and scientific impact is therefore of great importance. This article aims to suggest an approach to analyze how the JIF quartile share of research articles differs among European universities in medical science, and how the byline positions of affiliated and non-affiliated authors can influence an article’s scientific impact. We examined the research output of universities in the Top 5 European and Visegrad Group Countries based on the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking 2022 (University of Oxford, ETH Zurich, Karolinska Institute, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, KU Leuven, Semmelweis University, Jagiellonian University, Charles University Prague, and Comenius University Bratislava). We found that the share of Q1 and the less prestigious Q3 and Q4 papers are inversely proportional when plotted against the ranks of universities. Whilst the proportion of Q1 papers is higher for the Top 5 universities, this ratio decreases with a less prominent place in the ranking. The presence of non-affiliated authors in the first, last, and corresponding author byline positions has a significantly positive effect on the Category Normalized Citation Impact, correlating with the position of the university in the ranking. Moreover, the difference in the Category Normalized Citation Impact between papers with affiliated and non-affiliated authors is also specific to university rank.

Several strategies are used by researchers and research facilities to increase their scientific production and consequent research quality. Bibliometric records show that coauthorship and the number of participating organizations in research publications are steadily increasing; however, the effect of collaboration varies across disciplines, and the corresponding author’s country appears to influence research impact. This finding inspired our research question for this study: How does international cooperation affect scientific impact, and does the affiliation of corresponding authors influence citation impact indicators at the level of individual publications? To this end, we provide a comparative evaluation of research articles published in Q1 journals among Visegrad Group countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) in Medical and Health sciences between 2017 and 2021. The study investigates the relationship between collaboration type (national vs. international) and scientific impact (impact factor of the journal and category normalized citation impact or research papers), as well as the impact of the country of the corresponding author’s affiliation on quantitative quality of individual papers. We show that Q1 research papers in international collaboration have a higher scientific impact than papers published in national partnerships. Moreover, the corresponding authors’ country of affiliation significantly affects scientific impact.

This study reviews prevailing trends in “for-profit” business-related gamification. It examines the current literature, focusing on gamification elements, industries and variables that is of interest to researchers in different business environments. A systematic mapping approach was applied to this study. Articles were selected from different databases in a two-step screening process, subject to sets of inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 25 articles were further for: (1) represented industries, (2) orientation of the gamified system, (3) types of implementation, (4) gamification elements analysed, (5) impact on companies, and (6) company variables analysed. Results confirmed that the number of empirical studies on gamification in for-profit organisations is growing. Researchers have placed greater emphasis on analysing customer-related gamification environments than on employee-oriented gamification. This finding is consistent with the prevailing trend of increasing demand from practitioners to gamify customer-related processes. This is likely due to the potential for higher positive impact on the performance of companies. Most frequently deployed gamification elements are badges, rewards, and leader boards. The literature suggests that over all, gamification has a positive effect on various company variables, such as motivation, engagement of employees, brand loyalty, and customer experience. This paper highlights the particular areas of business-related gamification that have already been examined and possible future directions.

The business models of sharing economy services can differ from each other in different-sized cities. This paper provides a deeper understanding of the implementation of locally operating services for car, bicycle and office sharing in the urban environment. Our goal is to reveal the differences between the capital city and an economically well-developed city in order to provide beneficial findings to the development of the presently operating services, or to the possible implementation of future services. Methodology of the paper applies the Business Model Canvas approach (BMC). We introduce a comparative analysis using data from the Hungarian database, which records details of all the publicly visible sharing economy services countrywide. The results show that BMC can reflect the main differences, constraints and key elements in the business models of sharing economy services. We can say that, in the case of a bike sharing service operated in the non-capital city, there is more segmentation than seen in the same service in the capital. There are significant price differences, especially in the case of long-term tickets. The number of inhabitants and private capital remain the biggest constraints in the case of car-sharing services, but there is also a possibility of implementation in the non-capital cities by applying small-scale services with a good value proposition and segmentation.