In this paper, we analyze Hungarian pension policies between 1998 and 2017, comparing the pre- and post-2010 periods. Before 2010, Hungary was a liberal democracy dominated by populist economic policies. We call this the period of democratic populism. After 2010, with center-right but illiberal...

This purpose of this paper is to analyze pension policy in an autocracy, using contemporary Hungary as a context. The inefficiencies and unfairness of the current policy can be characterized by tensions: the intra- and intercohort polarization of benefits rises, the difference between the loose...

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...

This paper surveys the most significant problems of the pension systems of EU11 countries. These nations had to transform their old-age social security systems after replacing a state-socialist economic order with a capitalist one. Stressing common as well as specific features, our paper...

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...

Though never stated explicitly, there is a hidden hypothesis that in a normal pension system, the retirement age and the contribution length are strongly and positively correlated. We compare the time paths of male and female correlation coefficients in Austria, Hungary, Germany and Sweden for...

We consider three transfer models with a representative individual who discounts the utility of the merit good with respect to the standard one's. In each model, a paternalistic government taxes the consumer and transfers him additional merit goods in return. The private purchase of the merit...

In his seminal model (Feldstein, 1985), the government operates a social security system to counter the representative worker's myopia. (i) For a complete myope, he determined a sizable optimal tax rate (and the corresponding benefit level). (ii) For a partially shortsighted worker, he...

In Hungary, initial pensions are indexed to average net wages, reported by official earnings statistics (ES), which does not cover the economy as whole. However, there is alternative statistical source on labour income, the national accounts (NA), intended to cover the total economy. The latter...

In this paper, we analyze Hungarian pension policies between 1998 and 2017, comparing the pre- and post-2010 periods. Before 2010, Hungary was a liberal democracy dominated by populist economic policies. We call this the period of democratic populism. After 2010, with center-right but illiberal...