Multiple futures for society, research, and innovation in the European Union: Jumping ahead to 2038
We contribute to the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature in two ways: (i) we consider how societal aspects are taken into account in research and innovation activities in four fundamentally different futures, as opposed to analysing current practices; and (ii) put the emphasis on the framework conditions, as opposed to focussing on RRI principles […]
Intergenerational educational mobility – the role of non-cognitive skills
While it has been shown that university attendance is strongly predicted by parental education, we know very little about why some potential ‘first in family’ or first-generation students make it to university and others do not. This paper looks at the role of non-cognitive skills in the university participation of this disadvantaged group in […]
Do co-worker networks increase or decrease productivity differences? An agent-based model
Do labor mobility, and co-worker networks contribute to convergence or divergence between regions? Based on the previous literature, labor mobility contributes to knowledge transfer between firms. Therefore, mobility may contribute to decreasing productivity differences, while limited mobility to sustaining higher differences. The effect of co-worker networks, however, can be twofold in this process. They transmit […]
Uniqueness of Clearing Payment Matrices in Financial Networks
We study bankruptcy problems in financial networks in the presence of general bankruptcy laws. The set of clearing payment matrices is shown to be a lattice, which guarantees the existence of a greatest and a least clearing payment. Multiplicity of clearing payment matrices is both a theoretical and a practical concern. We present a new […]
Financial crisis and inequality in Hungary
The goal of this paper is to analyze the connections Hungarian income and wealth distribution on the one hand, and the macroeconomics impacts of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 on the other hand. To do this, I build a heterogenous agent, dynamic, general equilibrium model, which I calibrate using Hungarian income distribution data before […]
Wage Structure and Inequality: The role of observed and unobserved heterogeneity
This study aims to contribute to the literature of firms and occupations as prominent drivers of wage-inequality in multiple ways. First, we synthesize novel modelling approaches of recent studies in the field and use administrative linked employer-employee panel data from an Eastern European country, Hungary, to assess the contribution of individual, firm and job heterogeneity […]
Longevity gap and public pensions: a minimal model
The strong and increasing positive correlation between lifetime income and life expectancy (the longevity gap) has recently been widely studied. In this paper we employ the simplest, minimal model to demonstrate the impact of this long-neglected fact on the various types of public pension systems, especially on the issue of progressivity and neutrality.
Self-respecting worker in the gig economy: A dynamic principal-agent model
We introduce a dynamic principal-agent model to understand the nature of contracts between an employer and an independent gig worker. We model the worker’s self-respect with an endogenous participation constraint; he accepts a job offer if and only if its utility is at least as large as his reference value, which is based on the […]
Social Mobility and Political Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949-2017
This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary 1949-2017, for upper class and underclass families, using surnames to measure social status. In these years there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People’s Republic, 1949-1989, a Communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. Then the modern liberal […]
The labor market returns to ‘first in family’ university graduates
We examine how first in family (FiF) graduates (those whose parents do not have university degrees) fare on the labor market in England. We find that among women, FiF graduates earn 7.4% less on average than graduate women whose parents have a university degree. For men, we do not find a FiF wage penalty. A […]
Confidence in public institutions is critical in containing the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper investigates the relative importance of confidence in public institutions in explaining cross-country differences in the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. We extend the related literature by employing regression and machine learning methods to identify the most critical predictors of deaths attributed to the pandemic. We find that a one standard deviation increase (e.g., […]
Yes, You Can! Effects of Transparent Admission Standards on High School Track Choice: A Randomized Field Experiment
High school track choice determines college access in many countries. We hypothesize that some qualified students avoid the college-bound track simply because they overestimate admission requirements. To test this hypothesis, we designed a randomized field experiment that communicated the admission standards of local secondary schools on the academic track to students in Hungary before the […]
