The paper addresses the question why Hungarian state enterprises cut employment by two-digit percentages in the last years of state socialism. It argues that job destruction was a result of changing incentives and liberties (harder budget constraint, stronger insider power, loosening political...

The paper analyzes the evolution of relative wages using individual wage data, and the contribution of skills to productivity using firm-level information from Hungary, 1986-99. Its main conclusion is that skills obsolescence was, and still is, an important aspect of post-communist transition....

We extend the benchmark model of Aghion and Blanchard (1994), assuming two segments of the emerging private sector that differ in workers' productivity. We look at the paths of employment, wages, taxes, labor costs and profits during and after the transition, up until the shock is fully...

We extend the benchmark model of Aghion and Blanchard (1994) assuming two segments of the emerging private sector that differ in workers’ productivity. We look at the paths of employment, wages, taxes, labor costs and profits during and after the transition, up until the shock is fully...

The paper analyses changes in the demand for unskilled, young skilled, and older skilled workers during the post-communist transition in Hungary. Systems of cost share equations derived from the translog cost function are estimated for cross-sections of large firms observed in the period...