Thrown-up Stone? Facts and Trends in the XXIst Century

Abstract

Starting from the easily verifiable fact that times of peace are short and scattered inter-ludes in history books, i.e. mainly wars, revolu-tions and crises dominate, we could say that happy are the countries that do not have the kind of history outlined above. The crisis that erupted in the third quarter of 2007 and culmi-nated in the first quarter of 2009 provided an adequate basis in the global economy and thus for the European Union as well for accelerating the process of becoming ‘unhappy’. The dis-cussions related to the crisis and crisis manage-ment were contributed to, inter alia, by the Economic Policy Roundtable held on 15 April 2011. This event has traditionally been hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Debrecen every spring since 2007. Speakers at this year’s conference – which was entitled Thrown-up stone? Facts and trends in the XXIst century –included István Benczes, Dóra Gyõrffy, László Muraközy, Júlia Király, Ádám Török and István György Tóth. The roundtable discussion at the end of the day was moderated by József Péter Martin.