Recent studies show that firms are playing an increasingly important role in shaping wage inequality in advanced economies. We contribute to this literature by analysing wage inequality patterns and their firm dimension in Central and Eastern European countries. We use large, linked...

Policies supporting international student mobility prepare young people for the challengesof global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lowerparticipation rates in mobility schemes, and hence benefit less from their positive impactson career progression....

How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform? This paper sheds light on this question using a unique data set and procedure to reduce sample selection bias. Our evidence is from consistently coded, non-retrospective data...

This paper analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Blundell and Bond, 1998)...

Do empires affect attitudes towards the state long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire with its localized and well-respected administration increased citizens' trust in local public services. In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the...

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...

We estimate the wage effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) with universal firm-level and linked employer-employee panel data containing 4,926 foreign acquisitions in Hungary. Matching on pre-acquisition data and controlling for fixed effects for firms and detailed worker groups, we find...

I identify wage spillovers from the public to the corporate sector with the help of a large and sudden public sector wage increase, which raised real compensation by 40 percent in two years, changing the average public wage premium from minus 10 to plus 12 percent. Using a dataset covering about...

We examine the labor market performance of return migrants using the Hungarian Household Panel Survey. Two distinct selection issues are considered in the estimation of the earnings equation. The result that there is a "premium" to work experience abroad for women is robust across models we...

We use longitudinal methods and universal panel data on 30,000 initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four transition economies to estimate the impacts of privatization on employment and wages. The results in all four countries consistently reject job losses and they never imply large wage...