In this paper we present an overview of a number of issues relating to the equilibrium exchange rates of transition economies of the former soviet bloc. In particular, we present a critical overview of the various methods available for calculating equilibrium exchange rates and discuss how...

This paper estimates the relationship between innovation and firm performance by using Community Innovation Survey data for Hungary. It exploits the possibility of linking the innovation data to ownership and disaggregated trade data. Innovative firms are more productive, more likely to trade...

What is the effect of imports on productivity? To answer this question, we estimate a structural model of producers using product-level import data for a panel of Hungarian manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2001. In our model with heterogenous firms, producers choose to import or purchase...

One of the major tasks facing a transition economy is to create the competitive environment of a properly functioning market economy. It is widely believed that competition has a positive effect on efficiency, but the theoretical and empirical support is quite scarce. The objective of this paper...

This paper investigates the link between competition and efficiency for the Hungarian corporate sector during various phases of the transition process. We employ frontier production functions to explore differences among groups of firms, and to identify the typical adjustment process of each...

Labour market and financial information is combined to explore the effect of the quality of labour employed on the profitability of the firm. The quality of labour is measured as the portion of wage differentials that cannot be explained by the human capital model. Profitability of Hungarian...