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 TalentSpot 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
professor
leader of the team
assistant professor
Emese BRAUN
student
assistant lecturer
assistant professor
assistant professor
Balázs SZABÓ
PhD candidate
News
Budapest Winter Workshop 2024
The Budapest Winter Workshop (February 15-16) was organised by ANETI Labs and Center for Collective Learning. On the afternoon of the first day, Tamás Sebestyén and Erik Braun gave a lecture about the vulnerability and resilience in global supply chains. The program of the workshop was inspiring and motivating.
Researchers' night at the University of Pécs 2023
Erik Braun, András Gyimesi, Zita Iloskics and Emese Braun gave a lecture about the economic impact of the Russia-Ukraine war in Europe as a part of Researchers' night at the University of Pécs. The presentation covered products from the two countries that play a significant role in world trade. They showed how each country depends on the Russian and Ukrainian economies for these products and how EU countries can substitute the lost imports. Also, what is the relationship between dependence on the Russian economy and financial support for Ukraine.
EconNet was on the NetSci 2023
On July 12-14, the EconNet Team participated on the NetSci in Vienna, which is the flagship conference of the network science. Tamás Sebestyén presented a joint research with Erik Braun and Zoltán Elekes about the resolving of the complexity puzzle, how the positions in global value chains contribute to explaining economic development. At the conference the presentations were very varied, giving insights into the latest trends in network science.
Emese Braun’s achievement at the 36th National Students’ Scientific Association Conference
We are proud of Emese Braun, who won 2nd place at the 36th National Students’ Scientific Association Conference, held in Komarno, 20-22 April. Emese was participating in the Decision theory session, and presented her work about emergent cooperative behavior in social networks. She used a game theoretical approach in which different attitudes of the players as well as the network structure interact in shaping long run cooperative behavior. She pointed out that subsidizing cooperation can be counter-effective in the long run. Congratulations to Emese for her achievement!
Exposure to trade disruptions in case of the Russia–Ukraine conflict: A product network approach
A new paper was published by EconNet Team in World Economy. The study provides a product network-based analysis of the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the economy of third countries. The approach allows for more detail regarding geographical coverage and heterogeneity of the affected products. The results show that Post-Soviet and European countries have high exposure to Russian imports, confirming the energy dependence of these countries. Furthermore it is not exposure itself, but the decrease of exposure over time which correlates with military support.
The paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.13417
Invited speakers from the University of Pécs Faculty of Business and Economics at the forum of the Economic Modelling Society
Erik Braun examined the relationship between economic growth and position in global value chains, Zita Iloskics analysed the patterns of propagation of economic shocks across countries, Dóra Longauer discussed the impact of the structure of market linkages on economic equilibrium, while Norbert Szabó presented a method for the economic impact analysis of innovative technologies.
Network formation, asymmetry and equilibrium in monopolistic competition
A new paper was published by Dóra Longauer and Tamás Sebestyén in Szigma. The paper examines the results of introducing the assumption of incomplete connectedness into classical monopolistic market model and, at the same time, allowing market actors to decide about their connections. The results show that both sellers' and buyers' decision on who to connect with naturally lead to the emergence of scale-free structures that characterize most of the real networks. Households prefer firms with low prices and firms that produce at lower marginal cost can form more connections with households
11th International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications
The EconNet Team gave two presentations at the conference in Palermo. On the first day Erik Braun presented the results of his joint research with Tamás Sebestyén and Zoltán Elekes on "Relatedness, complexity, and growth: The relevance of the value-added approach in CEE countries". On the second day, Tamás Sebestyén presented their joint results with Emese Braun about cooperative behavior and conformism in social networks in the human behavior section. At the conference the presentations were very varied, giving insights into the latest trends in network science.
Researchers' night at the University of Pécs
Erik Braun and András Gyimesi gave a lecture about the UEFA Champions League as part of Researchers' night at the University of Pécs. The presentation introduced the basis of network theory and analysis through the Champions League match network. It showed how exciting the matches in the CL are and what financial effects they entail.
Public defense of doctoral thesis by Zita Iloskics
Zita started her doctoral studies at the UP School of Regional Politics and Economics in 2016 and successfully defended her thesis on 23.09.2022. In her dissertation she analysed shock propagation patterns in the global economy, focusing on the structural characteristics and channels of business cycle synchronization.
Congratulations on a successful dissertation and best wishes for further success!
61st ERSA Congress
The ERSA Congress was hold on 22-26 August 2022, where Erik Braun presented his paper in the section on supply chains, production networks and regions, entitled "Measuring structural resilience of economies: Globalization or deglobalization?". In this paper they use methods from Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) to capture the countries’ structural resilience building on sector level input-output data.
How many swallows make a summer?
A new paper was published by Emese Braun and Tamás Sebestyén. In terms of sustainability, this paper examines the effect of conformity and network structure on the emergence of cooperation. The results suggest that the relational structure of individuals, especially because of the presence of conformists, and the initial cooperation intensity of the society play a significant role in the degree of cooperation that emerges in the equilibrium state. In addition the network structure and the proportion of conformists can influence the effectiveness of a potential incentive mechanism considerably.
The network origins of price heterogeneity
A new paper was published by Tamás Sebestyén and Balázs Szabó in Netnomics, a journal published by Kluwer Academic Publisher. The article examines exogenous supplier-consumer networks in monopolistic competition and the relationship between the structure of these networks and price dispersion. The results show that a slight deviation from the complete network results in heterogeneous prices, although this heterogeneity becomes economically significant only under sparse or small networks.
17th Gazdaságmodellezési Szakértői Konferencia
The 17th Gazdaságmodellezési Szakértői Konferencia took place in Budapest on 17.06.2022. In the morning, Erik Braun gave a lecture on entilted "The role and place of Hungarian sectors in global value chains based on value-added trade", and in the afternoon, Tamás Sebestyén and Emese Braun presented their latest research results in their presentation on "Which swallows are making a summer? Cooperative behavior under monetary incentive."
The EconNet Research Group at CEU Data Stories 2022 exhibition
The CEU Data Stories is an exhibition of research visualizations on social and behavioural topics. We are very pleased to announce that the exhibition also featured the joint work by Erik Braun, András Gyimesi and Eszter Kovács, entitled "Temporal Network of all UEFA Champion League matches".
The visualization (click on the picture) displays a multilayer temporal network of the UEFA Champions League (CL), where the nodes are the teams and the edges represent the number of CL matches between them. The three temporal layers show three distinct eras: (1) the 90s when initially only champions could qualify, (2) the 2000s when the 32-team group stage format was introduced, and (3) the 2010s when the prize pool started to drastically increase and the Financial Fair Play regulations were introduced. The aim of this project is to capture the evolution of the core-periphery structure. By visualizing the temporal dynamics we can track each team’s route to global fame or fade into obscurity.
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 UP 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 UP 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 TalentSpot 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
2023
Braun, E., Braun, E., Gyimesi, A., Iloskics, Z. & Sebestyén, T. (2023). Exposure to trade disruptions in case of the Russia–Ukraine conflict: A product network approach. THE WORLD ECONOMY, https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.13417
2022
Longauer, D., & Sebestyén, T. (2022). Hálózatformálódás, aszimmetria és egyensúly monopolisztikus versenyben. SZIGMA, 53(2), 137-166.
Braun, E., & Sebestyén, T. (2022). Hány fecske csinál nyarat? A nem teljes hálózati szerkezet és az attitűd hatása az együttműködésre. KÖZGAZDASÁGI SZEMLE, 69(7-8), 869-901. http://doi.org/10.18414/KSZ.2022.7-8.869
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
Sebestyén T., & Szabó B. (2022). Market interaction structure and equilibrium price heterogeneity in monopolistic competition. NETNOMICS, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11066-022-09155-5
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. (2020). 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
