This paper documents the existence and main patterns of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for 8 EU countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain) at two points in time (in general 1995 and 2002) and explores possible...

We present a new general-equilibrium behavioural microsimulation model designed to assess long-run macroeconomic and fiscal consequences of reforms to the tax and transfer system. General-equilibrium feedback effects are simulated by embedding microsimulation in a parsimonious macro model of a...

Applications tend to ignore that measured TFP reflects the variation of output that cannot be explained by changes in inputs. Such a change is not necessarily technological, so measured TFP differences across firms are an amalgam of technological, efficiency and other differences in attributes,...

This paper proposes a simple and transparent methodology for decomposing changes in the aggregate labour force participation rate over time into changes in the labour force participation behaviour of different population groups and changes in each group’s population share. Unlike traditional...

In this paper we investigate corporate investment behavior using a large panel of Hungarian firms between 1993 and 2002. The standard neoclassifical framework is used to derive empirically feasible specifications, however, several other issues beyond the scope of the framework are also...

In this paper I address the question to what extent wages are affected by product market uncertainty. Implicit contract models imply that it is Pareto optimal for risk neutral firms to provide insurance to risk averse workers against shocks. Using matched employer-employee dataset, I adopted the...

Following the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP), the paper presents new estimates of downward real and nominal wage rigidity for Hungary. Results suggest that nominal rigidity is more prominent in Hungary than real rigidity. When compared to other...

In this paper we apply the Early Warning System methodology to ten Central and Eastern European Countries to find useful sets of indicators which could predict macroeconomic and financial imbalances. We argue that finding such indicators is crucial in the current monetary policy framework...

We show that in both time-dependent and state-dependent sticky price models, prices of sticky price products (i.e. whose price changes rarely) contain more information about medium term inflation developments than those of flexible price products (i.e. whose price changes frequently). We do this...

This paper uses a structural factor model to analyze sectoral heterogeneity in the impact of monetary policy in Hungary. Monetary shocks are identified with sign restrictions. The impulse responses of aggregate variables are similar to the findings of previous VAR based studies. The sectoral...