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,...

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 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...

This paper estimates the effect of school starting age on academic performance using the 2006 "National Assessment of Basic Competencies" (NABC), focusing on disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. The instrumental variable estimates of the school starting age imply that those who start...

We look at the effect of school starting age on standardized test scores using data covering all grade four and grade eight students in Hungary. Instrumental variables estimates of the local average treatment effect suggest that children generally gain from starting school one year later and the...

We estimate a double hurdle (DH) model of the Hungarian wage distribution assuming censoring at the minimum wage and wage under-reporting (i.e. compensation consisting of the minimum wage, subject to taxation, and an unreported cash supplement). We estimate the probability of under-reporting for...

The paper looks at the effect of exceptionally large fluctuations in the level of public sector pay on the number and quality of workers moving from the private to the public sector in Hungary. Special emphasis is put on the unique pay rises taking place before and after the 2002 elections. 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,...