This paper examines the effect of childcare availability on maternal employment in Hungary based on 2016 Microcensus data. We exploit the exogenous variation in access to childcare due to informal admission practices based on the date of birth, to identify the effect of childcare availability on...

We evaluate the effect of a drastic cut in potential benefit duration, reducing the maximum length of UI benefits from 9 to 3 months in Hungary at the end of 2011. We rely on rich longitudinal matched administrative data, which allows us to obtain information on a large sample of UI benefit...

This paper evaluates a 90-day hiring subsidy designed for young jobseekers aged below 25, introduced in Hungary in 2015 as part of the Youth Guarantee programme. The subsidy covers the total wage cost with no obligation to retain the new hire when the subsidy expires. The analysis is based on...

In Hungary, employees could claim sickness insurance benefit within 3 days of job-loss, which would enable them to extend their benefit duration by up to 90 days. The maximum number of days of this 'passive sickness benefit' was halved in 2007. We first investigate whether claiming passive...

Does a drastic cut in in potential benefit duration affect the take-up of unemployment insurance benefits among those eligible? We evaluate a policy change reducing the maximum length of UI benefits from 9 to 3 months in Hungary at the end of 2011. We rely on rich longitudinal matched...

Good management practices are important determinants of firm success. It is unclear, however, to what extent pro-management policies can shape aggregate outcomes. We use data on corporations and their top managers in Hungary during and after its post-communist transition to document a number of...

Using a novel Hungarian dataset on firms and their Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), we estimate the impact of hiring expatriate CEOs. By examining foreign acquisitions where the new owner replaces the incumbent CEO with an expatriate or a local CEO, we address the selection into both acquisition...

The theory of geographical markets is based on the notion that economic activity is not evenly spread and regional inequalities have an impact on the decisions of economic agents. Retail gasoline markets are almost perfect examples of geographical markets. The gasoline sold by the stations is a...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...