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...

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...

This paper is based on a survey carried out among Hungarian secondary school students to examine (i) what students know about wages and relative wages when they are in their senior year of secondary school and are about to make decisions on their further studies (ii) how they form expectations...

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...

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

Labour market analysis places much emphasis on the concept of search. But there is insufficient empirical information on (a) the relationship between reported search and job-finding and (b) how search behaviour changes over a spell without work. We investigate these issues using a sample...

The paper disputes the frequently presented and quoted statement that in post-socialist economies data on power consumption are better indicators for aggregate output changes than data on official GDP. Attempt is made to show that the variation of electricity intensities in post-socialist...

The paper analyzes the changes in the relative labor market position of the public sector employees, using both macro-level employment statistics and large wage surveys. While competitive employment decreased by more than 30 per cent during the transition, number of public employees have not...

By way of presenting an ahistorical fictitious story, this paper is ment to illustrate that: - in contrast to conventional wisdom, trade unions, in their symbiosis with capitalist firms, may further rather than impede price-mediated self-regulation in the labour market via their involvement in...

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...