The paper is based on data of individual work histories of the 1993/94 representative Roma survey in Hungary. First the disappearance of full employment of Roma in the 1984-1994 period is documented by the use of a quasi cross-sectional macro model and the patterns of employment characteristics...

This study estimates the expected long-term budgetary benefits to investing into Roma education in Hungary. By budgetary benefits we mean the direct financial benefits to the national budget. The main idea is that investing extra public money into Roma education would pay off even in fiscal...

The paper analyses changes in the demand for unskilled, young skilled, and older skilled workers during the post-communist transition in Hungary. Systems of cost share equations derived from the translog cost function are estimated for cross-sections of large firms observed in the period...

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...

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...

The effect of minimum wages on employment has been a matter of debate for more than a decade. Apart from a few cases (Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Columbia) the empirical works analysed the aftermaths of minor increases in the minimum wage, and yielded mixed results. Hungary 2000-2002 provides a...

The paper analyses regional relative wages using individual and firmlevel data from Hungary 1986-96. In regions hit hard by the transition shock labour costs fell substantially; the estimated elasticities of wages with respect to regional unemployment were in a range typical of mature market...

The substantial rise of wage inequality in Central and Eastern Europe has attracted the attention of sociologists, concerned with social equity, and economists for whom it indicated the growing differentiation and restructuring of relative prices on the labour market. This research wanted to...

Using unique data from Hungary, we assess the gap in standardized test scores between Roma and non-Roma students and show that this gap is comparable to the size of the Black-White test score gap in the United States in the 1980s. The ethnic test score gap in Hungary is nearly entirely explained...

This paper documents and decomposes the test score gap between Roma and non-Roma 8th graders in Hungary in 2006. Our data connect national standardized test scores to an individual panel survey with detailed data on ethnicity and family background. The test score gap is approximately one...