As part of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP, 2023), the Hungarian government pledged to reform the pension system. The main themes are sustainability and adequacy. The pension plan is to be discussed publicly and put into law by March 2025. The last detailed official pension study was the 2016-discussion paper of the Hungarian National Bank which should be updated. The present study is a private work which may contribute to the improvement of the current pension system. The current and the projected states of the Hungarian pension system are outlined, and then simple and complex reforms are formulated. Naming just two reform steps, I start with the simplest step: the return to public discussion steered by a revitalized Fiscal Council and end with the most complex: the introduction of the flexible (variable) retirement age.

The working paper examines the role and development of the Central and Eastern European venture capital sector in the five years between 2016 and 2020. This period includes both the end of the recovery after the economic crisis in 2008 and the downturn due to the coronavirus crisis in 2019. A statistical analysis of venture capital funds and investments in the CEE region confirms that, while the overall position of the region in Europe did not change over the period under review, the differences between countries in the region increased sharply. The northern part of the region rivals the most developed countries in Europe, the central part is driven by an abundance of public resources, while the venture capital sector in the south is only in its infancy. The size of the venture capital funds in the region is far below the European average, so the start-ups only have a chance to become successful if they are involved in the international flow of venture capital. The role of the government in the funds in the region is extremely high, but the selection between companies is therefore not based solely on market considerations. Rent-seeking behaviour goes against the essence of venture capital. As a result of the deterioration of the global political and economic situation, the entire Central and Eastern European region is losing its ability to attract capital.

Egy EU kezdeményezés miatt a magyar kormányzatnak szoros ütemterv szerint ki kell dolgoznia egy cselekvési tervet, amelynek része egy nyugdíjreform is. A tervet nyilvánosan meg kell vitatni, majd törvénybe iktatni. Az utolsó nyilvános és részletes nyugdíjtanulmány MNB műhelytanulmányként 2016-ban jelent meg, amely az azóta bekövetkezett változások miatt szükségképpen felfrissítésre vár. Addig is érdemesnek láttam egy észszerű nyugdíjreform-csomagot felvázolni, amely a jelenlegi rendszert hatékonyabbá és méltányosabbá tenné. Először a mai helyzetet körvonalazom, majd az egyszerűbb és a bonyolultabb reformok irányait mutatom be. Itt csak azt említem meg, hogy vissza kellene térni a 2008 és 2010 közti Költségvetési Tanács gyakorlatához, amelynek Titkárságán kiváló szakemberek serege dolgozott a nyugdíjreformhoz hasonló kérdéseken. A megvalósíthatóság politikai feltételeivel nem foglalkozom.

How do temporary spells of absence from work affect individuals’ labor trajectory? To answer this question, we augment a `wage ladder’ model, in which individuals receive alternative take-it-or-leave-it wage offers from firms and potentially suffer accidents which may push them into temporary absence. In such an environment, during absence, individuals do not have the opportunity to receive alternative wage offers that they would have received had they remained present. To test our model’s predictions and to quantify the importance of foregone opportunities to climb the wage ladder, we use linked employer-employee administrative data from Hungary, that is linked to rich individual-level administrative health records. We use unexpected and mild accidents with arguably no permanent labor productivity losses, as exogenous drivers of short periods of absence. Difference-in-Differences results show that, relative to counterfactual outcomes in the case of no accidents, (i) even short (3-12-months long) periods of absence due to accidents decrease individuals’ wages for up to two years, by around 2.5 percent; and that (ii) individuals reallocate to lower-paying employers. The share of wage loss due to missed opportunities to switch employers is between 7-20 percent over a two-year period after returning to work, whereas at most 2 percent is due to occupation switches. Our results are robust to (a) instrumenting absence with having suffered an accident, (b) exploiting the random nature of the time of the accident, and (c) within-firm matching of individuals with and without an accident and subsequent absence spell.

Research on the effect of in utero shocks on health at birth may be influenced by in utero selection. This study outlines a conceptual framework and shows that the results of the standard empirical approach are biased if (i) the exposure changes the probability of fetal death and (ii) health differences exist between deceased and surviving fetuses. Furthermore, an empirical example is provided to illustrate, the potential importance of fetal selection. Examining the impact of heat on birth weight, I find that accounting for fetal selection substantially increases the heat effect compared to the standard approach. These results suggest that incorporating the distorting effect of fetal losses into the estimations may be critical in some cases to provide more informed guidance for public policy.