Delayed school entry increases internal locus of control
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 […]
The Role of Competition, Earned Money and Personal Characteristics in Climate Games
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 […]
Powerful Parental Preferences
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 […]
The Role of Flexible Wage Components in Gender Wage Differences
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 […]
Heterogeneity of Economic Expectations – Dissecting the Role of Socioeconomic Status
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 […]
Health Shocks, Social Insurance, and Firms
We study the role that firms play in social insurance benefit uptake after their workers experience health shocks. Social insurance in our setting, Hungary, is universal and comprehensive, thus allowing us to quantify the impact of firms on benefit uptake and labor market outcomes on top of the social safety net. Using matched employer-employee administrative […]
Regional resilience and the network structure of inter-industry labour flows
This paper explores how the network structure of local inter-industry labour flows relates to regional economic resilience across 72 local labour markets in Sweden. Drawing on recent advancements in network science, we stress-test these networks against the sequential elimination of their nodes, finding substantial heterogeneity in network robustness across regions. Regression analysis with LASSO selection […]
What makes a new doctor better? Effects of new primary care physicians on healthcare provision
Using individual-level administrative panel data of all diabetic patients in Hungary for years 2010-2017, we analyze the effects of primary care characteristics on healthcare provision in rural areas by exploiting the change of the person of the general practitioner (GP), be it a temporary substitution or a permanent new doctor. We estimate event study models […]
Economic Preferences across Generations and Family Clusters: A Comment
Chowdhury, Sutter and Zimmermann (2022) assessed the risk, time, and social preferences of family members in rural Bangladesh, presenting two main findings. First, there is a strong and positive association between family members’ preferences, even when controlling for personality traits and family background. Second, families can be grouped into two clusters: approximately 20% of the […]
Endogenous language use and patience
The linguistic-savings hypothesis posits that the grammatical marking of future events in languages is linked to future-oriented behavior. Recent experimental studies have suggested patience as a possible mechanism connecting language use and future-oriented behavior by exogenously manipulating what language is used. Our paper explores the association between patience and the language that people naturally use, […]
Family foster care or residential care: the impact of home environment on children raised in state care
This paper investigates how the type of home environment – family foster care or residential care – affects the adult outcomes of individuals who were raised in state care during adolescence. While it is established in the literature that living in residential care is detrimental for babies, the effect of living in different types of […]
Statistical overstatement of average wages and its impact on pensions: the case of Hungary
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 indicate a markedly lower rate of growth in wages than […]
