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 […]
Állami segítséggel történő startup finanszírozás nemzetközi tapasztalatai
Az államnak fontos szerepe van a startupok minden egyes fejlődési szakaszának finanszírozásában. A startupok finanszírozásának túlnyomó részét vissza nem térítendő állami támogatás és a hitelnyújtás biztosítja, mely utóbbit állami garanciavállalás is segíti. A kockázati tőke szerepe sokkal kisebb. Az állam azonban ezt is segítheti, mégpedig elsősorban a privát befektetőkkel való társfinanszírozás és a privát kockázati […]
Escaping from Low-Wage Employment: The Role of Co-worker Networks
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 […]
The Effect of Involuntary Retirement on Healthcare Use and Health Status
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 […]
Not just words! Effects of a light-touch randomized encouragement intervention on students’ exam grades, self-efficacy, motivation, and test anxiety
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 […]
Co-worker networks and firm performance
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 […]
