Transition has involved major job destruction and creation. This paper examines the skill content of these changes using a detailed three country firm survey. It shows that transition has exerted a strong bias against unskilled labour who have lost employment disproportionately. Moreover, job...

We look at the effect of school starting age on standardized test scores using data covering all grade four and grade eight students in Hungary. Instrumental variables estimates of the local average treatment effect suggest that children generally gain from starting school one year later and the...

We estimate a double hurdle (DH) model of the Hungarian wage distribution assuming censoring at the minimum wage and wage under-reporting (i.e. compensation consisting of the minimum wage, subject to taxation, and an unreported cash supplement). We estimate the probability of under-reporting for...

The low level of job search is a unique feature of the Hungarian labour market compared to other former communist countries. The paper looks at search intensity among the non-employed using micro-data of the European Labour Force Survey. A section comparing Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in detail...

Thanks to a joint effort of the Central Statistical Office (KSH) and the National Pension Insurance Directorate (ONYF) a special survey conducted in January-March 2008 provided information - for the first time - on the total accrual years of the non-pensioner population of Hungary. The data base...

Using firm-level and individual panel data from 2008-2009, the paper looks at how Hungarian firms combined employment reduction with "softer" measures like short-work and wage cuts, in response to the crisis. The data suggest that the wage distribution remained practically unchanged while hours...