This study analyses properties of fast growing small and medium sized firms, known as gazelles. Using balance sheet information for the 2000-2008 period, we show that a small fraction of companies is responsible for a large share of new jobs created in the business sector. For instance, the top...

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...

By making use of Duncan & Hoffman's empirical model, the economic returns to overeducation and undereducation are estimated using comparable microdata from the middle of the 2000s for 25 European countries. The estimates confirm some of the main results found in the literature. The wage premium...

The paper examines the labour-market position of persons with the higher-education diploma in Hungary. First, using simple labour-market indicators and international-comparison data, we find that persons with the higher-education diploma in Hungary are in a relatively good position in terms of...

Built upon data from 11 subsequent waves of yearly wage surveys carried out by the National Labour Center in Hungary from 1992 to 2003, the paper examines, with the use of elementary statistical tools, whether or not earnings fluctuations differed in size among groups of employees with different...

Since 2006, the law has changed in a way that the expected wage of the employers has to be at least the double of the minimum wage. The employers who pay less than this amount to their employees are more likely to be audited by the tax authority. According to my hypothesis this change has...

We provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the long-term effects of the 50 percent public sector wage increase initiated by the government in 2002 in order to improve the relative situation of public sector workers. The aim of this policy was to attract high quality workers to the public...

The share of female workers is significantly higher i the public than the private sector. This could be due to several reasons: different preferences towards job characteristics, or perhaps to lower discrimination against women in the public sector due to strict wage grids and hiring and...

I identify wage spillovers from the public to the corporate sector with the help of a large public sector wage increase, which raised public sector wages by 40 percent in two years time, changing the average public relative wage from a fallback of 10.5 percent to a 12.5 percent premium. The...

The paper investigates teachers' decisions to leave the profession. First we examine the role of earnings and earnings in alternative occupations in these decisions, and then the paper discusses how the public sector wage increase in 2002 has effected exiting decisions of teachers. Using large...