The starting point of this paper is a widely shared fundamental preference according to which Hungary should follow a fast, sustainable development path and catch up with the developed world in the foreseeable future. Questions raised in this paper are related to the instrumental preferences....

The study provides a brief summary of the theoretical and empirical considerations related to the possible determinants of firm growth. With a special focus on small and medium-sized firms, we investigate the role of the availability of internal and external finance. After examining the key...

We estimate the effect of imported machines on the wages of machine operators utilizing Hungarian linked employer-employee data. We infer exposure to imported machines from detailed trade statistics of the firm and the occupation description of the worker. We find that workers exposed to...

This paper proposes a simple method for estimating the lock-in effects of switching costs from firm-level data. We compare the behavior of already contracted consumers to the behavior of new consumers as the latter can serve as contrafactual to the former. In panel regressions on firms' incoming...

By 2008, the Hungarian pension system has become too generous and the implied contribution rate hindered growth. When the international economic and financial crisis deprived Hungary from normal credits, its government turned to international organizations for help. The most spectacular element...

The EU LEADER initiative has been running for 20 years and plays an important role in the development of European rural areas, however, in countries joining to the EU after 2004 it is still a relatively new phenomenon. In Hungary, for example, the LEADER+ programme was launched in 2005 with an...

This paper presents the specificities of Hungarian foreign trading firms from different perspectives, like concentration, efficiency and sectoral structure. Hungarian trade is highly concentrated similarly to other countries. Trading firms are more efficient than their non-trading peers,...

The majority of the small-scale fruit and vegetable producers due to their small sizes are not able to meet the requirements of the large commercial chains by themselves. Only the cooperation could bring an effective solution. The POs are able to concentrate the scatteredsmall-scale commercial...

In Hungary, the previously non-existing venture capital and private equity industry has strengthened over the past two decades, and it has become one of the leaders of the CEE region. Approximately 90% of the capital allocated to investments overall were raised from private sector investors. The...