Huoranszki, Ferenc
Decision-making Theory and Moral Norms

The relationship between the theory of rational decisions and the role of the moral observance of norm, played in the explanation of action, is a problematic one. The reason is that a considerable part of social scientists and philosophers use such a model of the theory of rational decisions, canonised by Leonard Savage, in which action can only have a derived value. This model is linked to the interpretation of action, elaborated by Hume and Kant, and the subsequent philosophical tradition. However, this variant of the theory of decision-making gives an adequate picture of the logical structure of pre-decision considerations only if certain conditions are met. However, there is such a variant of the theory of decision-making, elaborated by Richard Jeffrey, which is able to consider the fact that the rational actor assesses not only the consequences of his actions, but also the action itself. This variant of the theory of decision-making makes it possible to understand how the moral norms, as motivating forces are located at the logical space of pre-action considerations.
 

Szántó, Zoltán-Tóth, István György
Double or Quits, or, Should We Risk Money Found?
An Experiment to Measure Attitude to Risk
by the Method of Questionnaire

In our paper we have made an attempt to empirically analyse attitudes towards risk. As a starting point of our logic, we have accepted the basic concepts and analytical models of the theory of rational decision-making. After having differentiated between certainty, uncertainty and risk, we have defined three basic types of attitude towards risk, such as: avoidance of risk, neutrality to risk and the liking of risk. What we wanted to find out were the interrelationships to be explored in respect of the empirical types of attitude towards risk, and their socio-demographic determination, on the basis of the relatively little empirical data at our disposal. First of all the theory of rational decision-making was used, to clarify concepts and to build a hypothesis: part of the hypotheses, awaiting empirical control - attitude towards typical risk, and the hypotheses concerning the relationships between attitude towards risk and the extent of the stake, and the size of income - were derived from the theoretical models. The other hypotheses - concerning the socio-demographic interrelationships of attitude towards risk - were worded partly on the basis of empirical results, and partly intuitively. We started our empirical analysis by checking the various parts of hypotheses by relatively simple methods (such as cross tabulation). Of the socio-demographic factors our data seemed to corroborate the effect of school education only partially, the effects of occupation in a differentiated way, whereas age and gender straight away and quite unambiguously on the attitude towards risk. Yet all these results could be accepted with reservations because of the possible effects of composition. Therefore we considered it necessary to do a multi-variable statistical analysis of the data during the course of further analysis, with the help of logistic regression models.
 

Blaskó, Zsuzsa
Cultural Capital and Social Mobility

The paper studies the effects of cultural capital, acquired in the parental home, on social - school and occupational - mobility. According to the hypothesis, supported by regression equations, cultural capital is able to substitute for the limitations of other resources and it is able to promote the individual, supplied abundantly by cultural capital, into a more favourable status than the social position occupied by the parents. Whereas the relatively limited cultural capital, inherited by an individual, may set him or her out downwards in the social hierarchy. After the theoretical unfolding of the hypothesis it is shown that social mobility, guided by cultural capital, does really exist in the twentieth-century Hungary, but it is also revealed that its role is decreasing. However, marked differences can be found not only among the various cohorts in the operation of the mechanism, but also between men and women. If the sample is further broken up, it is found that the chances of mobility of girls are far more vigorously influenced by cultural capital than those of boys.
 

Sik, Endre
"Slave Market" on Moszkva Square

In Hungary part of the "classical" odd jobs (labour for a few hours or days) is distributed in the so-called "slave markets". In 1997 and in 1998 approximately in every fifth Hungarian village, or town there was such a market, which is somewhat higher than the value calculated in 1995 (18%).

The characteristics of the Moszkva Square slave market are the following on the basis of anthropological observation:

- the Square "opens" at 5 a.m., the largest number of job-seekers are present at about a7 a.m., and by about noon the Square practically stops functioning as a slave market.
- spring and summer are the busiest periods of the slave market,
- the employers are characteristically the building entrepreneurs of the nearby elite residential areas,
- the work to be performed is usually the simplest unskilled labour,
- the majority of job-seekers are Hungarians from abroad, males, many of them are homeless and poor,
- wages are low and hardly grow.

The technique of research was non-participant observation. The occasions of observation (84) were distributed between April 1995 and March 1996, so that they may be representative of the day, season and period of the day of observation. An observation lasted for two hours. In the initial and final phases of observation (taking up maximum five to ten days) the number of job-seekers present in Moszkva Square and the conditions of observation (weather, presence of police) had to be recorded. During the time in between (more than one and a half hours) the observer had two further tasks:

- 20-20 job-seekers had to be chosen randomly and their observable characteristics recorded,
- as many transactions as possible had to be recorded (offer, bargain, agreement, characteristics of the participants of transaction).

According to our observations only about 300 job-seekers turn up on an average market day (between 5 a.m. and 12 o'clock) at the slave market of Moszkva Square, and there are not many more successful transactions than 10-20 a day. It means that the function of the Moszkva Square slave market is the "production" of cheap unskilled labour for the building industry of Budapest.
 

Kelemen, Katalin
Small Enterprise in an Industrial Town:
Small Entrepreneurs in the Context of the Local
Economic Structure

In the present paper I have attempted to present the density and structure of enterprises in the context of the local economic structure. I wished to find out what effects shape the sphere of small entrepreneurs in the region and what is the relationship between small enterprise and the region. I was trying to find those, often contradictory, factors, or their constellations, characterising the region and the local economic structure, which may influence the territorial differences in the number and structure of enterprises. Based on international and domestic literature, such factors are, for instance:

- the level of development of the (local) economy (West-East slope),
- growth of consumption,
- technical changes,
- unemployment,
- the role of foreign capital,
- structure of branches,
- the structure of companies by size,
- local politics, etc.

In the case of Gyõr, a city where the GDP is the highest, next to Budapest, where unemployment is low, and where apparently the crisis of transformation has been accompanied by less jerks, it is all the more interesting that the number of enterprises is not outstanding and it is not above the average of county seats. Small enterprise is characterised by personal services producing for the local market, catering, further on, expedition and building industry, linked to boom. Small enterprise was unable to join the branches of manufacturing and processing industries, and engineering industry first and foremost, dominating the economic structure of the city, hence the proportion of outside small entrepreneurs contributing to them is rather low.

Looking for the causes, I studied on the example of Gyõr, what is the relationship of the density and composition of small enterprise of a town with its structural conditions, and what is the relationship of small enterprises among themselves and to the local economy.