We look at the effect of school starting age on standardized test scores using data covering all grade four and grade eight students in Hungary. Instrumental variables estimates of the local average treatment effect suggest that children generally gain from starting school one year later and the...

The partial privatization of the US Social Security system was clearly the top economic policy priority for the new Bush administration. While many famous economists, publicists and politicians support, others reject the partial privatization of the Social Security system. The international...

When and how to subsidize tax-favored pension accounts? To defend myopic workers against themselves, the government introduces a mandatory system but to help savers, it adds taxfavored retirement accounts. If the mandatory system is progressive, then a proportional voluntary system can...

The goal of this study is to present an insider view on the pension reforms implemented in Hungary between 1996 and 2009. Both political economy as well as institutional economics will be used as the main approaches to analyse and explain the reform process and some of its effects. The following...

In 1998, the left-of-center government of Hungary carved out a second pillar mandatory private pension system from the original mono-pillar public system. Participation in the mixed system was optional for those who were already working, but mandatory for new entrants to the workforce. About 50...

By 2008, the Hungarian pension system has become too generous and the implied contribution rate hindered growth. When the international economic and financial crisis deprived Hungary from normal credits, its government turned to international organizations for help. The most spectacular element...

Nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) pension systems have recently become popular because they provide the strong incentives of the private funded systems without requiring a difficult transition period. Using the framework of mechanism design, these systems have theoretically been criticized...

In this study standard Mincer earnings equations are estimated using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression in order to give a comprehensive picture of the returns to education in Germany and Hungary for the year 2000. To make the cross-country comparison of the returns to...

The study estimates the effect of school starting age on academic performance for Hungarian grade four students using the "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" (PIRLS) and the "Trends in Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMMS). The study uses the control function approach, exploiting...

This paper examines adult education in Hungary for the years 1999, 2001 and 2003 along three dimensions: (a) the fraction of individuals participating in adult education, (b) their demographic and socio-economic characteristics and (c) the probability of participating in adult education / adult...