This paper examines the easing cycle initiated by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank in August 2012 and its macroeconomic and financial market impacts. It first presents the operation of the transmission mechanism under normal economic conditions and then addresses the main challenges of the post-crisis...

Disability benefits are costly and tend to reduce labor supply. While spending can be contained by careful targeting, correcting past flaws in eligibility rules or assessment procedures may entail welfare costs. We study a major reform in Hungary that reassessed the health and working capacity...

Disability benefits provide social insurance against the risk of losing working capacity, as well as an important source of income for individuals with disabilities. They are also costly and tend to reduce labor supply. Although spending can be contained by careful targeting, correcting past...

The paper measures the impact of a wage subsidy for long term unemployed workers, using a large administrative dataset from Hungary. While such subsidies are often promoted as an efficient way to speed up the recovery of the economy or to increase demand for low skilled workers, existing...

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...

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...