The application of economic mathematics reflected in gazdálkodás I.

Tenk, Antal

Keywords: economic mathematics application experiments, foreign effects

Following the Second World War the ownership, organisational and production conditions of Hungarian agriculture were fundamentally transformed and the application of mathematical methods did not even arise. Whilst elsewhere economic mathematics methods were being increasingly applied to the most diverse fields of economic life (including agriculture), in countries with centrally planned economies this field was considered taboo for a long time – a suspicious activity that could only be imagined under conditions existing in a capitalist society.
The mass establishment and increased consolidation of big, so-called “socialist” farms (state farms and agricultural co-operatives) at the end of the 40s and start of the 50s, created a new situation. Economic leaders were being faced with increasingly difficult tasks in the organisation and direction of big farm production. For this reason, researchers and teachers turned to the introduction of methods that made planning, organisation and direction more modern and reliable. The gradual introduction of applying economic mathematics methods was, therefore, partly induced by the actual demands of practice.
In the mid-50s, despite rather strong ideological reservations, those basic works began to appear in Hungary that provided a methodological basis from the mathematical side for later practical application. Numerous books and studies appeared in this period, east-west seminars were organised, a number of foreign experts travelled to Hungary who personally assisted in the domestic application of economic mathematics, and a few researchers made it abroad.
Gazdálkodás has taken a lead in this work from the very beginning: reviews and summaries of the Hungarian programmes of foreign experts appeared one after the other and by 1959 writings, which – with simple programming applications – made operating optimization possible, were being reported. The 1960s can justifiably be called Hungary’s golden age of the agricultural application of economic mathematics. In this period, hardly an issue appeared in which there was not something written about this subject.