Using individual-level EU-LFS data from nine European countries, this study analyses how the probability of occupational and job mobility has changed in the first year of the COVID pandemic in nine European countries compared to previous years. We show that the probability of leaving a job increased slightly, and the probability of changing occupations and moving between jobs decreased, although the latter effect was less pronounced. If we distinguish between employment changes within the firm and employment changes related to job changes, the probability of the former type of employment changes has decreased and the latter type has remained unchanged. These results are consistent with previous studies on the impact of the economic crisis on job and occupational mobility. The impact of the pandemic was heterogeneous across countries, with Hungary a massive outlier. This is likely due to the belated and strict conditions of the job retention scheme there.

The expansion of higher education has resulted in a fragmentation of student careers on a global scale. The number of students pursuing atypical pathways has been growing. In the European Union, the Bologna Process has facilitated the mobility of students across higher education institutions, the transition between different courses of study, increasing the diversity of pathways. The existing literature on higher education careers agrees that the most appropriate approach to studying training pathways is a dynamic one. In our paper, using a rich, individual-level administrative research database, we trace higher education pathways over six years at the monthly level and then categorise them using sequence analysis. For this information on the monthly educational statuses and on parallel employment status and parallel studies were taken into account. The resulting student life course categories were also examined regarding individuals’ cognitive skills, educational and family background. Finally, regression estimates were used to examine each trajectory type’s early labor market success. To examine the educational and labor market pathways of individuals over seven years is unique in the region, as the combined analysis of higher education careers and subsequent labor market success too.

This paper examines the impact of occupational regulation, a labour market institution affecting many workers, on labour market fluidity in Europe. Using data from 10 European countries, we estimate the effect of occupational regulation on occupational mobility (transition to another occupation) and job loss (transition from employment to unemployment). By leveraging the variation in regulation across countries within an occupation, we identify the regulation effect using a two-way fixed effects approach. We also compare the effects of more and less stringent forms of regulation. The results show that occupational regulation substantially decreases occupational mobility, while its effect on job loss is ambiguous. More stringent regulation (occupational licensing) has a more substantial effect than weaker requirements.

This study investigates the predictors of incarceration among a cohort of Hungarian primary school students aged 14-15, followed until they are 23-24 years old. We analyze how school quality (including mean test performance and peer characteristics), exclusionary practices, and school/student non-compliance affect the likelihood of incarceration, time spent in prison, and recidivism. Employing linear (OLS) and non-linear (logit, Poisson) models, as well as clustering methods to assess career-path heterogeneity, we identify several key school-level variables as strong indicators of future legal conflicts. The sample comprises 50% of all eighth-graders who were obliged to take a basic competencies test in 2008, with about 1% incarcerated at least once over the next nine years. The predicted probability of incarceration is 0.5% for boys in low-status, well-performing schools, but it increases to 1.0% in low-status, poorly performing schools (at the mean/baseline of other regressors). Absence on the test day raises the risk to 2.8%, and in schools with high grade repetition rates and insufficient support services, the likelihood rises to 8.1%. Although these factors may not directly cause delinquency (some being arguably endogenous), they highlight symptoms associated with a higher risk of criminal behavior, providing valuable insights for targeted interventions by parents and school authorities.

This paper investigates whether there have been time periods between 1999 and 2019 in Hungary when government spending has been self-financing, i.e., when the government has faced a fiscal free lunch. By self-financing, it is meant that government spending, initially financed by issuing bonds, does not lead to an increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio due to improvements in the budget balance resulted in by stimulated economic activity. Some macroeconomists think that while government spending is arguably not self-financing in normal times, it could have become self-financing in the United States (US) during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) due to 1) stronger fiscal multipliers, 2) stronger hysteresis effects, and 3) lower interest rates than usually. This paper estimates the parameters of a simple model of debt dynamics on Hungarian data to study whether these arguments also hold for an emerging small open economy, like Hungary, in which fiscal multipliers are thought to be weaker, and where interest rates increased during the GFC. It is found that government spending has not been self-financing in the short run before the GFC (1999Q1-2008Q3), has been at the edge of being expected to be self-financing in the long run, but has not actually turned out to be. During the GFC (2008Q4-2012Q4), it cannot be excluded to have been self-financing in the long run, and might have already been self-financing in the short run, as well. However, these findings are much less robust than those for the US. Between the GFC and the COVID recession (2013Q1-2019Q4), government spending was not self-financing in the short run, but was expected to be self-financing in the long run.

Substantive literature examined the gender wage gap, its components and how it changes over time. The decisions that workers make in their career paths when changing occupations, entering new industries or moving to another municipality, have a major impact on the evolution of their wage trajectories. Women and men follow different typical paths across industries and occupations. If changes in career paths are accompanied by geographical moves, these job-related relocations may have an additional wage effect, as different sizes of settlements offer different labor market opportunities. Larger cities or metropolitan areas typically offer higher wages than smaller municipalities. The wage returns to career changes and geographical relocation may differ by gender, affecting the wage gap between women and men. In our study, we examine the wage effects of occupational and geographical mobility by exploring gender differences over individual’s careers.  We identify complete career sequences from Hungarian administrative data and use these career sequences as explanatory variables to examine the urbanization wage premium and the wage effects of moving. Our results show that the wage effects of different types of shifts differ between the two sexes: both in terms of immediate wage benefits and in terms of the long-run expected wages of potential career paths that open up with shifts.

This study examines the impact of ambient air pollution on birth rates in Europe. We estimate the causal effect of air pollution on fertility by utilizing variations in wind speed and the number of heating days as instrumental variables for air quality. Our analysis encompasses 657 NUTS-3 regions, with each region having 2 to 6 years of observations between 2015 and 2020. Thus, our study is the first to extend this analysis to multiple countries, pollutants, and years. Our findings indicate that a one standard deviation increase in particulate matter concentration levels leads to a 5.1% decrease in birth rates the following year and an additional 5.9% decrease two years later. Moreover, a similar increase in air pollution has a more pronounced adverse effect on fertility in countries with lower GDP. Other pollutants have little role in shaping fertility outcomes. This result is important for environmental policies with limited resources.

We study the impact of delayed school entry on the locus of control (LoC) among Hungarian students, using statutory cutoff dates for school enrollment as a plausibly exogenous variation. Our findings indicate a causal relationship between delayed school entry and an increase in internal LoC, with a policy effect of approximately one-tenth of a standard deviation for 8th-grade students, which corresponds to a one-third standard deviation effect for complier students. The policy implications of these findings are significant, providing evidence that delaying school start could serve as an effective intervention to enhance LoC among students, which is positively associated with many later life outcomes.

Using different variants of the classic climate game, we investigate the role of competition and the source of endowment (windfall vs. earned). Participants completed a detailed personality test (including climate attitudes and economic preferences) before the experiment and were asked about their strategies afterwards. We find that competition did not significantly affect whether groups reached the target, even though the probability of achieving the common goal was lower in the presence of competition. Participants cooperated more when they had to earn the endowment. Based on the pre-experiment questionnaire, participants who viewed their personal actions as more important and effective in combating climate change were more likely to cooperate in the climate game, while the rest of the measured personality items did not exhibit a consistent pattern. Analysis of the post-experiment survey indicates that those who aimed to maximise earnings contributed less to the common pool. In contrast, those who believed the goal was achievable and aimed to achieve it contributed more to the common pool throughout the game.

In this study, we examine how parents’ educational aspirations for their offspring (referred to as parental preferences) are related to university attendance. Even after controlling for the cognitive abilities of the child, we document a considerable variation in parental preferences, which are, in turn, strongly associated with university attendance. Utilizing regressions based on machine learning techniques, we also find that parental preferences exert a large and significant effect on university attendance, even when accounting for factors that influence parental preferences, including parental education, household characteristics, effort, expectations, and the child’s cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.

A main driver of the gender wage gap is that women earn a lower firm-specific wage premium than men. We document the role of flexible wage components in driving both within-firm and between-firm gender differences in firm premia. For this purpose, we link wage survey data on performance payments and overtime to an administrative linked employer-employee dataset from Hungary. We find that the gender gap in firm premia is negligible at firms that do not pay either performance payments or overtime, while it is more than 11 percent at firms where all employees receive performance- and overtime payments. These patterns are also present when we control for differences in the labor productivity of firms or after composition differences are accounted for using AKM models. Finally, a decomposition exercise shows that performance payments and overtime payments contribute 60 percent to the gender gap in firm premia and 25 percent to the overall gender gap.

Economic decisions depend on economic expectations. Using Hungarian monthly survey data between 2000 and 2009, we show that the relationship between expectations (both at the macroeconomic and household levels) and socioeconomic status (SES), as represented by income rank and education level, is non-linear. In many instances, there is no significant difference in expectations between the two lower quintiles. However, individuals in the upper (fourth and top) quintiles exhibit significantly more positive expectations than those in the lower quintiles. There is also a clear difference in expectations between the fourth and the top quintiles. In terms of education level, individuals with a high-school degree have significantly more positive expectations compared to their peers without one. Significant differences in economic expectations are also observed between high-school graduates and individuals with a university diploma, particularly regarding inflation, savings expectations, and the assessment of the household’s future financial situation. Disparities in household-level expectations based on SES are more pronounced than those in macroeconomic expectations. Past experiences and household-level optimism seem to be key factors influencing macroeconomic expectations. Furthermore, we document that both macroeconomic and household-level expectations predict the intention for significant expenditures, even after controlling for SES variables.