The structure of trade expansion in Hungary and Poland over the period 1990-1998 and its implications for labour-market adjustment is examined. An econometric analysis of trade and employment data suggests that changes in domestic consumption and productivity have significant influence on...

Though the Hungarian pension system has been suffering from many erroneous rules, in the present paper we confine our attention to the rules of retirement in Hungary since 1990. In every pension system, there exist two rules which determine how the lifetime contribution (which is approximately...

There is an increasing political interest in Hungary to relocalize food. A Policy Intervention for Food Relocalization Index is introduced to quantitatively reveal how rural development programme measures should be allocated efficiently to promote local food production. Results show that present...

In the last decade, a number of experiments have stated that spending money on experiences rather than on material goods tends to make people happier. However, the experimental designs used to analyze the relationship between consumption and subjective well-being had several limitations: small...

It is common practice in the literature to compute labor flows from data on stocks. To use these flows in standard search models, it is assumed that the economically relevant movements occur between employment and unemployment. If there are significant flows between labor force participation and...

In 2011, the Hungarian government introduced seniority pensions (Female40): females, who have been accumulating at least 40 years of eligibility (related to the length of contributions), can retire at any age without actuarial benefit reduction. The elimination of other early retirement scheme...

Men's labor income is on average higher than that of women practically everywhere. This gender pay gap can be decomposed into two components: on the one hand men usually work in better paid jobs (the sorting effect), and, on the other, even in the same occupation men get higher wages (the...

Using administrative data on incomes and healthcare spending, we develop new evidence on the distribution of healthcare spending in Hungary. We document substantial geographic heterogeneity and a positive association between income and public healthcare spending.

This paper describes a Hungarian social microcredit programme, called Kiútprogram and discusses the major lessons drawn from its operation. It was launched some 10 years ago as an adaptation of the Grameen model to the Hungarian circumstances to decrease the level of prejudice and...

We study the role of productivity convergence and financial conditions in the recent growth experience of Hungary. We build a stochastic, small-open economy growth model with productivity convergence, capital accumulation and external borrowing. Using empirically identified processes for...