Goal-oriented transformative change processes – that is, system-transforming processes that are guided by the ambition to resolve current or expected future societal challenges of various kinds – can only start once possible goals are considered by key stakeholders and the relevant actors are committed to act. Hence, there is a need for widening the scope of the current, partial conceptual models to consider the co-evolutionary interactions between technology, economy, and society to understand these changes. This claim is based on our review of Innovation Studies, Social Innovation research, and Sustainability Transitions research. The paper discusses the key conceptual elements of each strand; offers a definition of goal-oriented transformative change and building blocks for a new, integrative framework to analyse it; proposes directions for future research and draw tentative governance and policy implications.

As the world economy operates more and more through computerised transactions, new possibilities for intertwining criminal and lawful economic activities open up, as well as new opportunities for law enforcement agencies to fight crime. Considering the tremendous and potentially devastating damages caused by criminal economic activities, the issue should be high on the agenda of policy-makers, including R&I policy-makers. The race between criminal actors and the state trying to protect companies and citizens will be a permanent one. The paper provides and overview of trends and drivers in these domains, highlighting potential disruptions. It also presents four scenarios with a time horizon of 2040 to explore the role of R&I activities and regulations in shaping the possibilities for the interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities and derive policy implications.

The complex nature of criminal economic activities, their detection, investigation, and prosecution are related to research and innovation in at least three areas. First, research in, and the development and improvement of, information and communication technologies necessary to monitor, track and analyse criminal activities. Second, regulatory techniques for preventing innovators from i) moving outside the sphere of lawful activities; ii) moving too far and entering a grey zone where regulation is missing; and iii) settling on clear-cut criminal behaviour. Third, research in, and the development and improvement of, forensic techniques of reconstructing what actually happened, and thus attributing responsibility for crime.

This paper studies the effects of employment shocks on births and induced abortions. We are the first to show that abortions play a role in fertility responses to job displacement. Furthermore, we document precautionary fertility behavior: the anticipatory response of women to expected labor market shocks. Using individual-level administrative data from Hungary, we look at firm closures and mass layoffs as conditionally exogenous employment shocks in an event study design. After establishing that both shocks have a similarly large and persistent negative effect on employment and wages, we show that women already react to the anticipation of these shocks, and their fertility responses differ substantially for firm closures and mass layoffs. We find that abortions increase by 88% in the year before firm closures, while the number of births is not affected. Mass layoffs have no significant effect on abortions in the preceding year but increase the number of births by 44%. Mass layoffs and firm closures differ in one crucial aspect: pregnant women cannot be laid off until the firm exists, but no such dismissal protection is available in the case of firm closures.  Thus, when dismissal protection is available, anticipated employment shocks increase the number of live births, whereas when it is not, they increase the number of abortions. These results suggest that dismissal protection has the potential to support women to keep pregnancies at times of economic shocks.

Tanulmányunkban bemutatjuk a kontrollhely fogalmát, ezt a közgazdaságtanban egyre gyakrabban kutatott nem-kognitív képességet. Ezután áttekintjük a kontrollhely közgazdaságtani irodalmát, és bemutatjuk, hogy akik úgy gondolják, maguk irányítják az életüket, sikeresebbek az élet számos területén. Ezt követően egy reprezentatív magyar felmérés adatait vizsgáljuk meg, amelyen többnyire viszontlátjuk a szakirodalom által feltárt összefüggéseket. A kontrollhely a válaszadók 20-30-as éveiben egyre belsőbbé válik, majd 40 éves kor után ismét egyre külsőbb lesz. A mintánkban a férfiak inkább belső kontrollosak, mint a nők, valamint a belsőbb kontrollhely magasabb végzettséggel és magasabb jövedelemmel jár együtt. Ugyanakkor nem találunk szignifikáns összefüggést a kontrollhely és a munkaerőpiaci státusz között. Azt találjuk, hogy a belső kontrollosok szignifikánsan több megtakarítást és kevesebb tartozást halmoznak fel.