This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers' GPA and endogenous...

Social theories posit that peers affect students' academic self-concept (ASC). Most prominently, Big-Fish-Little-Pond, invidious comparison, and relative deprivation theories predict that exposure to academically stronger peers decreases students' ASC, and exposure to academically weaker peers...

In 2013, the Hungarian government cut the school leaving age from 18 to 16. We study the impact of this unique reform on the country's sizeable Roma minority using census data on the universe of 17-year-olds in 2011 and a 10 percent random sample in 2016. School attendance fell by more than 20...

As part of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP, 2023), the Hungarian government pledged to reform the pension system. The main themes are sustainability and adequacy. The pension plan is to be discussed publicly and put into law by March 2025. The last detailed official pension study was the...

The gender earnings gap can be attributed either to the different distribution of males and females across jobs or to within job biases in favour of men. The latter is frequently called the wage structure effect, and it may be interpreted as wage discrimination against women. In this paper we...

The study analyzes the reliability of corruption risk indicators using Hungarian public procurement data, specifically focusing on EU-funded contracts associated with a cartel case revealed by the Hungarian Competition Authority (HCA) in 2016. The investigation aims to determine whether...