In January 2001 the Hungarian government increased the minimum wage from Ft 25,500 to Ft 40,000. One year later the wage floor rose further to Ft 50,000. The paper looks at the short-run impact of the first hike on small-firm employment and flows between employment and unemployment. It finds...

The Roma or "Gypsies" are Europe's largest and poorest ethnic minority. Nearly 80 per cent of them live in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The Roma - Non-Roma educational gap, always substantial but slowly closing in the communist years, widened again after the...

The paper analyses how the municipality-level unemployment rates of 1993 and their changes in 1993-2001 were affected by the availability of urban labour markets in Hungary. The year 1941 share of the Jewish population is used as an instrument for availability, in order to mitigate endogeneity,...

This study estimates the expected long-term budgetary benefits to investing into Roma education in Hungary. By budgetary benefits we mean the direct financial benefits to the national budget. The main idea is that investing extra public money into Roma education would pay off even in fiscal...

This study estimates the expected long-term budgetary benefits to investing into Roma education in Hungary. By budgetary benefits we mean the direct financial benefits to the national budget. The main idea is that investing extra public money into Roma education would pay off even in fiscal...

Thanks to a joint effort of the Central Statistical Office (KSH) and the National Pension Insurance Directorate (ONYF) a special survey conducted in January-March 2008 provided information - for the first time - on the total accrual years of the non-pensioner population of Hungary. The data base...

The paper looks at school segregation in Hungary by ethnicity (Roma versus non-Roma) and social disadvantage. We use comprehensive data from the National Assessment of Basic Competences from 2006. School segregation is measured at various levesl: by micro-regions, within towns and cities, and...

The low level of job search is a unique feature of the Hungarian labour market compared to other former communist countries. The paper looks at search intensity among the non-employed using micro-data of the European Labour Force Survey. A section comparing Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in detail...

Using firm-level and individual panel data from 2008-2009, the paper looks at how Hungarian firms combined employment reduction with "softer" measures like short-work and wage cuts, in response to the crisis. The data suggest that the wage distribution remained practically unchanged while hours...