The EconNet team has been forming at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pécs since 2016, conducting research on different aspects of economic networks, primarily in the field of connecting the network structure of economic agents with the stability and robustness of economic systems. Tamás Sebestyén, the leader of the team defended his PhD in 2011 in the same subject. Later, several researchers were attracted to join the research, thus developing the activities in the form of an organized set of researchers and activities, gaining more embeddedness and fundraising capabilities later on. The formal aspects of the team were grounded by a grant under the New National Excellence Program in 2016, then a University of Pécs grant in its Talent Center allowed for activities to be organized as a research group, with 6 members. After this, the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Program and the Research Area Excellence Program (both running at UPFBE) provided funding for the research team, while a successful application for the ‘OTKA’ grant in 2021 resulted in a much broader financial background for a 4 years period, opening the possibility for long-run planning for the team.
People
Tamás SEBESTYÉN
associate professor
leader of the team
Erik BRAUN
assistant lecturer
Emese BRAUN
student
András GYIMESI
assistant lecturer
Zita ILOSKICS
assistant lecturer
Dóra LONGAUER
assistant lecturer
Balázs SZABÓ
PhD candidate
News
KRTK RKI workshop discussion
The Transdanubian Scientific Department of the KRTK RKI in cooperation with the Hungarian Regional Science Association held its workshop discussion on 28.04.2022. First, Erik Braun gave a lecture on entilted "Examining the dependency systems of the Hungarian economy in Hungarian and global value chains", followed by the presentation of Zita Iloskics "Shock propagation patterns in the global economy - structural features and channels of synchronization of business cycles". Finally, the authors presented the results of a joint research on the exposure of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The most recent article by Erik Braun, András Gyimesi and Gábor Murai in Statisztikai Szemle
The publication of Erik Braun, András Gyimesi and Gábor Murai entitled "Attractiveness of Champions League matches – chances of winning and central teams" was published in the 100th volume of Statisztikai Szemle, issue 3. In the paper, the authors use network analysis tools to examine the attractiveness of matches and the composition of successful teams in the Champions League series.
Doctoral inauguration ceremony
For Dóra Longauer and Erik Braun, members of our research team, an extended period of hard work came to an end on 10 March 2022, when they received their degrees and were conferred doctorates in a ceremony.
Dóra started her doctoral studies in 2013 as a student at the PTE Graduate School of Regional Politics and Economics, getting an absolute diploma in 2017 and a doctorate degree in 2022. His dissertation was in the field of network analysis and economic modelling and investigated the role of the market link network in the functioning of a monopolistic competitive market.
Erik started his PhD studies in 2016, also as a student at the PTE School of Regional Politics and Economics, and obtained an absolute diploma in 2020 and doctorate degree in 2021. In his thesis he examined the dependency system of the Hungarian economy in domestic and global value chains.
Congratulations on your doctorate degree and we wish you many more success!
Projects
Risks, efficiency and development in global and national production networks
The research focuses on the structure of global production networks, the particular position of sectors/countries within it and the risks and efficiency gains arising from given configurations. In this respect, the proposal poses three research questions to be analyzed. First, what are the efficiency gains and possible (systemic) risks in particular network structures, which characterize global production networks. Second, how does a restructuring towards more locally organized systems affect these gains and risks. And third, what are the possible routes/strategies for upgrading within global production networks towards more value added and how these strategies are affected by the restructuring. These questions are planned to be answered with the help of an extended dataset on global production networks, and an integrated measurement tool, which reflects positional and structural properties as well as contagion mechanisms in risk assessment. This project, no. K138401 has been implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the K_21 funding scheme.
Empirical and theoretical aspects of the structure of global and national value chains
This research project continues the previous work of the EconNet team in an organic way, along three complementary lines. First, the research focuses on the empirical analysis of the structural properties of global value chains, at the sector level, together with the embeddedness of these sectors into value chains. Second, we analyze shock-transmission through global value chains and the structure of this shock-contagion. Third, we investigate the possibility of expanding standard economic models with network structures connecting different economic actors, and how these network structures shape equilibrium and other macroeconomic phenomena. This research was financed by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Programme as well as the of the Thematic Excellence Program 2020 - Institutional Excellence Subprogramme of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology in Hungary, within the framework of the 4th thematic programme ,,Enhancing the Role of Domestic Companies in the Reindustrialization of Hungary” of the University of Pécs.
Economic networks behind macroeconomic phenomena
The structure of connections among economic actors play an important role in shaping economic performance, especially on different macroeconomic indicators like growth and fluctuations in output or inflation. Economic and macroeconomic analysis has devoted relatively little attention to investigating the relationship between the structure of relationships between economic agents and the stability of economic activity: state of the art macroeconomic models typically assume complete and/or symmetric relationships among economic actors both in terms of market interactions and information flows. The research targets this gap, along two dimensions. First, we map the structure of networks established by input-output tables and co-movement of certain economic indicators. Second, we investigate how and to what extent do non-complete and non-symmetric network structures modify the predictions of standard macroeconomic models with respect to equilibrium and stability. The research was financed by the Talent Center grant provided by the University of Pécs, under grant number 17886-4/2018 FEKUTSTRAT.
The role of network structure in the stability of economic activity
The aim of this project is to develop a modeling framework which is able to represent the role of interconnectedness between economic actors and provides a tool for analyzing the effect of these connections on different aspects of economic activity (output, business cycles, inflation). We use the toolkit of agent based modelling to develop the modeling framework, which is able to represent the detailed microstructure of the economy. In order to avoid the typical shortcoming of such models we start the model development from a model, which is widely used in standard economic modeling (this is the Dixit-Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition). In addition to developing the model framework, the research aims to analyze a few questions motivated by network theory: what is the role of different network structures (random, regular, small world or scalefree structure, strong and weak ties) in explaining the path of different macroeconomic variables, especially in responding to exogenous shocks. This research gained support from the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities, Hungary, under project number PTE/47252-3/2016 within the ÚNKP-16-4-III funding scheme.
Publications
2022
Braun, E., Gyimesi, A., & Murai, G. (2022). A Bajnokok Ligája mérkőzéseinek vonzereje – győzelmi esélyek és központi csapatok. STATISZTIKAI SZEMLE, 100(3), 234–265. http://doi.org/10.20311/stat2022.3.hu0234
2021
Braun, E., Sebestyén, T., & Kiss, T. (2021). The strength of domestic production networks: an economic application of the Finn cycling index. APPLIED NETWORK SCIENCE, 6. http://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-021-00411-5
Iloskics, Z., Sebestyén, T., & Braun, E. (2021). Shock propagation channels behind the global economic contagion network. The role of economic sectors and the direction of trade. PLOS ONE, 16(10). http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258309
Iloskics, Z., & Sebestyén, T. (2021). A sokkterjedés szerkezeti jellemzőinek változásai a fejlett gazdaságok között. STATISZTIKAI SZEMLE, 99(7), 661–699. http://doi.org/10.20311/stat2021.7.hu0661
2020
Braun, E., Kiss, T., & Sebestyén, T. (2020c). A magyar járműipar kapcsolati szerkezetének vizsgálata. KÖZGAZDASÁGI SZEMLE, 67(6), 557–584. http://doi.org/10.18414/KSZ.2020.6.557
Sebestyén, T., & Iloskics, Z. (2020). Do economic shocks spread randomly?: A topological study of the global contagion network. PLOS ONE, 15(9), e0238626. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238626
Szabó, B., & Sebestyén, T. (2020). Egyensúlyi ár oligopolisztikus versenykörnyezetben, tökéletlen informáltság esetén. ALKALMAZOTT MATEMATIKAI LAPOK, 37(2), 247–263. http://doi.org/10.37070/AML.2020.37.2.09
2019
Braun, E., & Sebestyén, T. (2019). A magyar járműipar beágyazottsága a hazai és nemzetközi értékesítési láncokba. STATISZTIKAI SZEMLE, 97(7), 687–720. http://doi.org/10.20311/stat2019.7.hu0687
Longauer, D., & Sebestyén, T. (2019a). Hálózati struktúra és nem teljes információ egy monopolisztikus versenyre épülő modellben. KÖZGAZDASÁGI SZEMLE, 66(12), 1257–1283. http://doi.org/10.18414/KSZ.2019.12.1257
Longauer, D., & Sebestyén, T. (2019b). Hálózati szerkezet és endogén preferenciák egy egyszerű cseremodellben. SZIGMA, 50(1–2), 35–57.
2018
Sebestyén, T., & Longauer, D. (2018). Network structure, equilibrium and dynamics in a monopolistically competitive economy. NETNOMICS, 19(3), 131–157. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11066-018-9129-y
Contact us
EconNet Team
University of Pécs
Faculty of Business and Economics
Rákóczi út 80., H-7622 Pécs (Hungary)
econnet [at] ktk.pte.hu
