Modern central banks have adopted a ‘risk management’ approach in assessing and presenting risks to macroeconomic stability. This paper seeks to contribute to the improvement of central banks’ current strategies for Central and Eastern European countries, first by assessing the potential...

During the recent crisis bank lending to the non-financial corporate sector declined substantially in Hungary and this slump proceeds in the aftermath of the recession as well. However it is not evident whether it is a result of the slow recovery of the real economy (the lack of credit demand),...

Until recently only aggregate data were available on national payment turnover. In reality, however, there are substantial differences across individual settlements (or between the various districts of Budapest). As a result, there is hardly any settlement which would be more or less on a par...

Following the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP), the paper presents new estimates of downward real and nominal wage rigidity for Hungary. Results suggest that nominal rigidity is more prominent in Hungary than real rigidity. When compared to other...

This study defines various fiscal indicators for different analytical purposes, adjusting for the distorting effect of creative accounting. It presents these indicators using the example of Hungary. The study abandons the general view that an identical balance is produced from the two...

The paper studies how high-income taxpayers responded to the introduction of the ‘extraordinary tax on individuals’ in Hungary in 2007. The study is based on a panel of tax returns compiled by the Hungarian Tax Authority for the purposes of this study, containing information on 10 percent of...

This paper relates firm level input changes and productivity to aggregate growth of the Hungarian economy for the period 1992 to 2008. The decomposition includes manufacturing, services, agriculture and construction. Results suggest that the role of firm productivity in growth was not stable...

The goal of this study is to determine the reasons behind high cash demand in several Central European countries, especially Hungary. We distinguish between legal and illegal cash demand in an attempt to model the former. In our approach, legal cash demand can be explained by transactional and...

over the last decade, the microstructure approach to exchange rates has become very popular. The underlying idea of this approach is that the order flows at different levels of aggregation contain valuable information to explain exchange rate movements. The bulk of empirical literature has...

This paper documents the existence and main patterns of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for 8 EU countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain) at two points in time (in general 1995 and 2002) and explores possible...