Spatial differences of reindustrialization in a post-socialist economy: manufacturing in the Hungarian counties

Over the past two and a half decades, the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, have become an integral part of the global economy. Following the change of regime, the rate of foreign direct investment increased, modern industries emerged and exports became significant. However, this process was halted by the global economic crisis in many advanced and transition economies, and the concept of ‘reindustrialization’ emerged as one of the economic policy responses to the new challenges generated by the crisis. In our paper, we study whether reindustrialization is present following the lowest point of the crisis in one of the post-socialist countries of the EU, in Hungary. If so, in which regions and industries, and under what conditions? Our research indicates that reindustrialization can be generally observed only in a few rural regions after 2009, limited to only one or two industries, while, for instance, in the capital and in its agglomerations and in urban regions with large research universities, deindustrialization is more likely to take place.     

A Revision to the U.S. Southwest Archaeomagnetic Master Curve

Recently, two problems have been recognized with the United States Southwest archaeomagnetic master curve (Eighmy, 1991; LaBelle & Eighmy, 1997; Sternberg, 1989). One of these problems, the damping problem, is inherent to the moving window method of curve construction proposed by Sternberg (1989). The other is due to the fact that the small number of independently dated virtual geomagnetic pole determinations available for the period between 900–1100 are not representative of secular variation during this period. The analyses presented here confirm the existence of these two problems and suggest that they distort the curve by less than 1·0° and between 1·0° and 2·0° respectively. Based on these findings, a new curve is proposed for the U.S. Southwest.     

Impact of European Union development subsidies on Hungarian regions

Since the collapse of the communist system, regional inequalities have increased in Central European Countries. This paper describes an assessment of the impacts of regional development programmes on the development of Hungarian regions at a highly disaggregated level between 2002 and 2008. We construct a multi-dimensional composite indicator to estimate the overall development of rural regions and capture social, economic and environmental dimensions. The impacts of rural development programmes were investigated through counterfactual analysis in combination with Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences approaches. There has been considerable variation with increasing concentration in the level of subsidies distributed during the analysed period. From a policy perspective, the results are disappointing. Irrespective of the subsidy measures or methodology employed, the impact of the former is very close to zero or non-significant. Our findings cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of development policy and the long-run convergence of European regions.     

The pre-AD 585 extension of the U.S. Southwest archaeomagnetic reference curve

A set of 104 independently dated archaeomagnetic directions was used to extend the U.S. Southwest reference curve back to 375 cal BC and to calculate isolated mean VGPs centered on 960 cal BC and 2390 cal BC. Prior to this study, most U.S. Southwest reference curves extended to only ca. AD 585. This study employed Sternberg’s moving window technique with variably sized windows, rather than fixed windows, to smooth the dataset into a continuous curve. The size of each averaging window was determined by the density of data captured by the window, such that each window had a minimum data density of 5.0 and a minimum window size of 50 years. This approach differs from previous studies in the U.S. Southwest, which have applied a uniformly sized averaging window to a dataset regardless of the temporal distribution of the data.     

Archaeomagnetic research in the Andean highlands

Eleven archaeomagnetic samples were collected from several sites near Porco, Bolivia as part of the Proyecto Arqueológico Porco-Potosí. These samples were collected in order to 1) explore the availability of appropriate sample materials in the Bolivian Andes, and 2) assess the feasibility of pursuing reference curve research for this region. In addition, this research explored the archaeomagnetic dating application of reference curves constructed from the global geomagnetic field model gufm1 (Jackson et al., 2000), which covers the period from AD 1590–1990. This model is particularly applicable to our project, since many of the project sites are late prehispanic (pre-AD 1532) and early historic (ca. AD 1532–1825) in age. Of the 11 samples, three appeared to contain an insufficient amount of ferromagnetic minerals to provide reliable results, while eight samples produced acceptable-to-good results. The data from the eight good samples were compared to a reference curve for the period of AD 1600–2000 that was calculated for this project from the global field model, gufm1. The archaeomagnetic dates obtained for two of the samples agreed with archaeological expectations, while those for four other samples marginally or greatly postdated the archaeological age expectations. Two additional samples produced significantly different directions and could not be dated against the reference curve. It is likely that the age discrepancies for four of the samples stem from inaccuracies in the archaeomagnetic data, the archaeological age expectations, the calculated reference curve, or some combination of these factors.     

5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoritic iron

The earliest known iron artefacts are nine small beads securely dated to circa 3200 BC, from two burials in Gerzeh, northern Egypt. We show that these beads were made from meteoritic iron, and shaped by careful hammering the metal into thin sheets before rolling them into tubes. The study demonstrates the ability of neutron and X-ray methods to determine the nature of the material even after complete corrosion of the iron metal. The iron beads were strung into a necklace together with other exotic minerals such as lapis lazuli, gold and carnelian, revealing the status of meteoritic iron as a special material on a par with precious metal and gem stones. The results confirm that already in the fourth millennium BC metalworkers had mastered the smithing of meteoritic iron, an iron–nickel alloy much harder and more brittle than the more commonly worked copper. This is of wider significance as it demonstrates that metalworkers had already nearly two millennia of experience to hot-work meteoritic iron when iron smelting was introduced. This knowledge was essential for the development of iron smelting, which produced metal in a solid state process and hence depended on this ability in order to replace copper and bronze as the main utilitarian metals.     

Spatial autocorrelation of ABO serotypes in mediaeval cemeteries as an indicator of ethnic and familial structure

Hungarian cemeteries in an effort to detect familial structure. Different ethnic groups buried in separate areas dominated the spatial pattern in two cemeteries, leaving insufficient power to test for familial patterns. In a third, ethnically homogeneous cemetery, no evidence of familial structure was found. A simulation showed that familial structure could readily be detected by the methods applied when it exists in an ethnically homogeneous population. The spatial autocorrelation methods employed would have detected the ethnic diversity in the two cemeteries containing graves from different populations, even in the absence of archaeological information to that effect. A restricted randomization procedure was developed to test two alternative hypotheses concerning the ethnic designations of the occupants of the cemetery at Szentendre. As a result of this test, the hypothesis that graves located in a rough circle (putative Lombards) differ serologically from those located at the periphery (putative nonLombards) is strongly preferred over a second hypothesis based on grave goods which would imply spatially random placement of the graves of the two ethnic units.