Low-wage jobs are often regarded as dead-ends in the labour market careers of young people. Previous research focused on disentangling to what degree the association between a low-wage job at the start of working life and limited chances of transitioning to better-paid employment is causal or spurious. Less attention has been paid to the channels that may facilitate the upward wage mobility of low-wage workers. We focus on such mechanisms, and we scrutinize the impact of social ties to higher-educated co-workers. Due to knowledge spillovers, job referrals, as well as firm-level productivity gains, having higher-educated co-workers may improve an individual’s chances of transitioning to a better-paid job. We use linked employer-employee data from longitudinal Swedish registers and panel data models that incorporate measures of low-wage workers’ social ties to higher-educated co-workers. Our results confirm that having social ties to higher-educated co-workers increases individual chances of transitioning to better-paid employment.

We analyse the causal effect of involuntary retirement on detailed indicators of healthcare use and health status. Our identification strategy is based on a pension reform in Hungary which forced public sector workers above the statutory retirement age to full time retirement. Using rich administrative data, we find that on the three-year horizon, involuntary retirement decreases the number of primary care doctor visits, the consumption of antiinfectives for systemic use and drugs of the respiratory system, and the non-zero spending on antiinfectives, the drugs of the alimentary tract and metabolism and of the cardiovascular system. We also find that the impact on the latter two drug categories is driven by the drop in income due to involuntary retirement. The effects of involuntary retirement are comparable to the short-run effects of voluntary retirement, identified from a change in the statutory retirement age. We conclude that there is little evidence for health deteriorating effects of involuntary retirement and provide explanations for the possible mechanisms behind our results.

Motivated by the self-determination theory of psychology, we ask how simple school practices can forge students’ engagement with the academic aspect of school life. We carried out a large-scale preregistered randomized field experiment with a crossover design, involving all the students of the University of Szeged in Hungary. Our intervention consisted of an automated encouragement message that praised students’ past achievements and signaled trust in their success. The treated students received encouragement messages before their exam via two channels: e-mail and SMS message. Control students did not receive any encouragement. Our primary analysis compared the end-of-semester exam grades of the treated and control students, obtained from the university’s registry. Our secondary analysis explored the difference between the treated and control students’ self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety, obtained from an online survey before students’ exams. In the whole sample, we did not find an average treatment effect on students’ exam grades. However, in the subsample of those who answered the endline survey, the treated students reported higher self-efficacy than the control students. The treatment affected students’ motivation before their first exam—but not before their second—and did not affect students’ test anxiety. Our results indicate that automated encouragement messages sent shortly before exams do not boost students’ exam grades. Nevertheless, since occasionally received light-touch encouragement messages instantly increased students’ self-efficacy even before an academically challenging exam situation, we conclude that encouraging students systematically and not just shortly before their exams might lead to positive emotional involvement and help create a school climate that engages students with the academic aspect of school life.

Firms and employees can benefit from information diffusion through social connections at other firms. Therefore, co-worker networks observed in collaborative projects or assumed from job co-occurrence have been analyzed in a wide literature ranging from management to economics, and economic geography. Yet, beyond case-studies, the actual information flows are seldom identifiable in these networks and previous focus on firm- or employee benefits was mainly limited to dyadic relations across firms. To address this gap, we simulate co-worker networks within firms from large-scale administrative data, for which we use parameters fitted to information networks that we collected with a survey and from social media profiles. Then, following all individuals through job moves over their career, we establish the dynamic co-worker network across firms of the entire ICT industry in Sweden. Fixed-effect regression models suggest that growth of average income is significantly higher in those firms that have diverse connections but are central to the network as well. We find that large firms benefit more from triadic closure in the co-worker network, stressing the role cohesive relations in sharing complex knowledge. Our results highlight that firm growth is embedded into the eco-system of co-worker networks that facilitate information flows across firms.

Innovation enhances other performance indicators of a firm beside productivity. Buyers are ready to pay higher price for higher quality or more suitable products due to innovation. Product prices, however, reflect the market position of the firm, too. Demand functions estimated using transaction level trade and domestic sales data yield firm level aggregated measure for quality. Productivity, size and foreign ownership increase, while innovation decreases our quality measure. Deeper analysis of innovation is needed in order to understand the reason for these seemingly contradicting results.

Az országok közötti jelentős fejlettségi különbségek árszintkülönbségekkel járnak együtt, és a fejlettségi szintek közeledését – a reálgazdasági konvergenciát – hosszabb távon az árszintek közeledése kíséri. Bár az egy főre jutó GDP-szintek folyó árfolyamon történő, vagyis nominális összehasonlítása alkalmatlan a fejlettségi különbségeknek és az országok közötti reálgazdasági közeledésnek a kifejezésére, a relatív nominális szintek változásának reál- és ár-összetevőre való felbontása megmutatja, hogy egy fejletlen ország „nominális felzárkózása” mennyiben származik abból, hogy az előállított javak egy főre jutó mennyisége relatíve bővült, illetve abból, hogy a javak, azonos pénzben kifejezve, viszonylag megdrágultak. A relatív nominális változások kétféle szemléletnek megfelelő statisztikai forrás alapján bonthatók ár-, illetve reálösszetevőre, amelyek az Európai Unió (EU) több tagországára nézve eltérő jelzéseket adnak az ár-, illetve reálfelzárkózás alakulásáról. Az alternatív felbontások eredményei azonban megegyeznek abban, hogy az EU közép- és kelet európai tagországainak gyors „nominális felzárkózása” 1995 és 2008 között nagyobb részben az euróban kifejezett árszint-felzárkózáshoz (a valuták reálfelértékelődéséhez) köthető, és a 2008 utáni időszak „nominális elakadása” a relatív árszint-felzárkózás megtorpanásához/megfordulásának tulajdonítható: a GDP/fő-vel mért reálfelzárkózás lassult ugyan, de nem állt meg.

Mellékletek a műhelytanulmány alapján készült, a Külgazdaság 2021/9-10. számában publikált, A „nominális felzárkózás” időben változó összetevői: reálgazdasági és árszintfelzárkózás az Európai Unióban 1995 és 2019 között című cikkhez.

This paper explores the spatial patterns and underlying determinants of repeated inventor collaboration across European NUTS 3 regions. It is found that only a small fraction of co-inventor linkages across regions are repeated, while community detection reveals that these collaborations are clustered in geographical space more intensively compared with collaboration in general. Additional results from gravity modelling indicate that links in the inter-regional co-patenting network emerge mainly through the triadic collaboration of regions, while geographical proximity becomes the most influential factor for repeating co-inventor ties. In addition to that, the combination of technological similarity and shared third partner regions offer a premium for the likelihood of repeating collaboration, but only when geographical proximity is present as an enabler.

Social networks amplify inequalities by fundamental mechanisms of social tie formation such as homophily and triadic closure. These forces sharpen social segregation, which is reflected in fragmented social network structure. Geographical impediments such as distance and physical or administrative boundaries also reinforce social segregation. Yet, less is known about the joint relationships between social network structure, urban geography, and inequality. In this paper we analyze an online social network and find that the fragmentation of social networks is significantly higher in towns in which residential neighborhoods are divided by physical barriers such as rivers and railroads. Towns in which neighborhoods are relatively distant from the center of town and amenities are spatially concentrated are also more socially segregated. Using a two-stage model, we show that these urban geography features have significant relationships with income inequality via social network fragmentation. In other words, the geographic features of a place can compound economic inequalities via social networks.

We aim to identify the most influential members of the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament (COMAGRI). Unlike previous studies that were based on case studies or interviews with stakeholders, we analyse the voting power of MEPs using a spatial Banzhaf power index. We identify critical members: members whose votes are necessary to form winning coalitions. We found that rapporteurs, EP group coordinators and MEPs from countries with high relative Committee representations, such as Ireland, Poland or Romania are powerful actors. Italy emerges as the most influential member state, while France seems surprisingly weak.

Ebben a cikkben Magyarországon elsőként vizsgálom a kognitív készségek szerepét a felsőoktatási végzettség megtérülésében. Az adatok a KRTK Adatbank Kapcsolt Államigazgatási Paneladatbázisából származnak (Sebők 2019). Az adatforrás lehetővé teszi a különböző államigazgatási adatbázisok együttes vizsgálatát a magyar lakosság 50%-os mintáján. Az elemzésben a 2008-ban 10. osztályos középiskolások kompetenciaeredményeit, mint a korai kognitív készségek proxy változóját használom a hosszú távú diplomás pályakövetéses vizsgálatomban. A tanulmányban az oktatás hozamszámítási megközelítései közül a kereseti függvények módszerét alkalmazom.

We analyse the timing, magnitude and income dependence of pharmaceutical panic buying around the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary. We use district-level monthly and daily administrative data on detailed categories of pharmaceutical purchases, merge them to income statistics and estimate multilevel panel models. Our main results are as follows. First, the days of therapy (DOT) of pharmaceutical purchases increased by more than 30% in March 2020, when major lockdown measures were announced. This pattern holds for almost all categories of pharmaceuticals. Second, shortly after the panic reactions, the aggregate amount of pharmaceutical purchases returned to their pre-shock levels, however, the frequency of pharmacy visits decreased. Third, the panic buying reaction was significantly stronger in richer geographical areas, where – according to the daily data – people also reacted earlier to the pandemic-related news. Overall, the results suggest that panic buying of pharmaceuticals can have detrimental effects on vulnerable populations.

Tanulmányunkban a KSH munkaerő-felmérése és havi teljesítménystatisztikája segítségével vizsgáljuk a koronavírus járvány első hullámának azonnali gazdasági hatásait. A mikroadatok vizsgálata lehetővé teszi, hogy az aggregált statisztikáknál részletesebben mérjük fel a gazdasági visszaesés által okozott károkat. Az eredmények a 2008-2009-esnél is súlyosabb visszaesésre és az egyenlőtlenség növekedésére utalnak. A diplomások az átlagnál jobban vészelték át a válságot: körükben kisebb volt az állásvesztés valószínűsége, nagyobb arányban tértek át távmunkára és az őt alkalmazó cégek árbevétele is kevesebbet esett. A külföldi tulajdonú exportáló vállalatok árbevétele az átlagosnál nagyobbat zuhant márciusban, de nyárra már megközelítette a kora tavaszi értékét. Ezzel szemben a magyar tulajdonú cégeknél a visszaesés lassabb, de tartósabb volt.