Zoltan Dorogi (p)

Judit Berkes

Creative industries have become more and more significant role in our economy as described by various models. Especially in the countries of Central Europe, transformation of the economic structure raises a number of questions, whether the region remains a semi-periphery or can move up the hierarchy of value production. The emergence of the creative economy is a sign of this; however, its significance is modest. Policies focused on industrialization of cities in CEE region, although high value-added processes are linked to the creative economy, which have become less prominent.
The aim of this article is to analyse the presence of creative industries in various groups of cities from CEE region, focus on Visegrad countries. At the same time, it compares the results in different types of cities (more and less industrialized ones, cities to capitals).
Using qualitative research methods, we can see the background of creative industries, divide it different sectors, such as financial, IT, research and development or management, following internationally accepted definitions. These types of activities are based on highly skilled human resources and skills, assuming a link to knowledge sharing between regions leaded by a strong local-regional knowledge production and integration. Creative industries can empower the economic actors of the tertiary sector to be more closely linked to developed economic centres. Creative activities can widen the role of smaller cities in the monocentric countries. Not least, creative activities enhance the attractiveness of the cities, as widely accepted, which is a new opportunity of less developed but dynamically evolving ones.

Piergiorgio Pilo (p)

Zoltan Dorogi

Recently, there has been a growing concern from academia and international institutions regarding the implication of culture on human and social development aspects. In particular, several scholars and policymakers focus on the role of culture in aspects such as mental health and (subjective) well-being. This research aims to investigate the implications of culture on subjective well-being by disentangling the effects of culture on life satisfaction and happiness. Culture is operationalized using measures of cultural consumption and access. Data collection is from the Multiscopo survey from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). The dataset includes information from 2013 to 2019 at both individual and regional levels (NUTS 2). The econometrics models employed in this research are ordered logit, longitudinal, and panel ordered logit models. In addition, for robustness checks, GMM-estimation to control further endogeneity. Preliminary results suggest that cultural consumption and access positively impact life satisfaction and happiness. However, happiness appears to be more sensitive to both types of culture. Instead, life satisfaction appears to be less sensitive to both types of culture.

Judit Berkes (p), Szilárd Rácz (p)

Piergiorgio Pilo

World cities are the main nodes of the global economy (Taylor, 2004), or alternatively, (Vitali et al. 2011) the world economy is controlled by the most important companies, headquartered in world cities. While the position of the leading world cities appears stable (GaWC, 2020), the shifting foci of the world economy and the emerging crises have triggered a continuous expansion and geographical restructuring of world cities.
Since the 1990s, new actors have been admitted into the rank of world cities (Sassen, 2001): a case in point were various cities in post-socialist countries, whose global economic integration was driven mainly by foreign direct investment (Lux-Horváth, 2017; Gorzelak, 2019). Aside from the capital cities, most of the regional centres in Central and Southeastern Europe – which are medium-sized or small cities at a European scale – are becoming gradually integrated into this global system (Rácz, 2019). From the perspective of space shaping processes, capital cities and metropolitan areas have played a dominant role in Central East Europe, gaining centre-stage in national and EU development policies. Thus, transformation processes have primarily affected metropolitan functions, which highlights the importance of studying this category of cities (Hajdú et al. 2017). The motivation of the research is to provide a review the post-socialist transformation and economic-geographical processes; its aim is to examine the territorial structure (at an aggregate, NUTS3 territorial level), economic potential and ownership structure of the most important firms in 14 Central East European and Balkan countries. The methodology of the study is based on an inventory drawing on data from Orbis Europe. Another objective of the research is to detect the emerging networks and economic cooperation between the countries studied, to identify factors as a basis for their comparison, and map the diversification of their ownership structure at the subregional and regional level.