In this study standard Mincer earnings equations are estimated using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression in order to give a comprehensive picture of the returns to education in Germany and Hungary for the year 2000. To make the cross-country comparison of the returns to...

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 impact of the administration of unemployment benefits on time spent unemployed is a neglected issue in discussion of incentive effects in Central and Eastern Europe. We use Labour Force Survey data, ad-ministrative registers and inspection of benefit office practices to show that there is...

We analyze the effects of privatization on firm-level wages and employment in four transition economies. Contrary to workers' fears, our fixed effect and random trend estimates imply little effect of domestic privatization, except for a slight negative effect in Russia, and they provide some...

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 paper analyzes the determinants and labour market effects of further higher education studies of graduates, the factors that induce them to switch to other fields (switching decision) and in comparison the determinants of deciding upon "deepening" their knowledge (to proceed with further...

This paper looks at one of the major contributor to low overall employment rate in Hungary, the very low activity of the elderly. Although there are scattered pieces of evidence about the social security system in general having substantial influence on incentives and activity, the actual...

The study estimates the effect of school starting age on academic performance for Hungarian grade four students using the "Progress in International Reading Literacy Study" (PIRLS) and the "Trends in Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMMS). The study uses the control function approach, exploiting...

The overall gender wage gap fell from .31 to .15 between 1986 and 2003 following the transition to a free market in Hungary. During the same time period, firms faced increased competition from both new domestic and foreign firms due to the rapid liberalization measures implemented by the...

This paper examines adult education in Hungary for the years 1999, 2001 and 2003 along three dimensions: (a) the fraction of individuals participating in adult education, (b) their demographic and socio-economic characteristics and (c) the probability of participating in adult education / adult...