We show the evolution of the delay of gratification (DG) of 951 students aged 10-14 years old during COVID-19-induced home-based online education by exploiting data from two waves of voluntary online surveys. Students with the highest socioeconomic status (SES) experienced a marginally significant absolute increase in DG, opening up a relative advantage between low- and high-SES students. The additional effort that high-SES parents invested due to the flexible home-office arrangements into the control and support of their offspring’s’ learning may have spurred these changes. Students’ DG is thus malleable according to the quantity and quality of time parents spend with their children.

We contribute to the experimental literature on primary school students’ cheating behavior by studying i) how cheating is influenced by ego depletion; ii) how it correlates with different individual factors. We carried out a large-scale, pre-registered experiment in the field of 28 Hungarian primary schools (126 classrooms) on a voluntary subsample of 1,143 students at grade levels 4 to 8. Students’ cheating behavior was measured by the incentivized dice-roll experiment. We find suggestive evidence that our light-touch treatment on ego-depletion increased students’ deceptive behavior. Cheating behavior correlated weakly with students’ individual characteristics. In a multivariate context controlling for between-classroom differences, we document that students’ cognitive ability correlated negatively, while their age positively, with their cheating behavior. We found students’ social context (their classroom belonging) as a more decisive determinant of students’ cheating behavior than individual characteristics.

This paper investigates the contribution of high-growth firms (HGFs) to aggregate productivity growth. Four stylized facts emerge. First, HGFs mainly contribute to productivity growth during their high-growth phase but not afterwards. Second, their contribution varies substantially across industries and it is not necessarily positive. Third, the impact on productivity depends on how HGFs are defined. Output-based HGFs substantially outperform employment-based ones in terms of their productivity contribution while the difference in terms of job creation is low. Fourth, HGFs’ contribution to productivity is higher in industries where industry dynamics favor growing firms, captured by the strength of reallocation and the relationship between productivity growth and size growth. We present a simple model to show that these patterns arise naturally under realistic correlation structures. Our results suggest that policies supporting HGFs may focus on firms increasing their sales, and these can effectively be complemented by framework policies promoting efficient reallocation.

A V4 országokban a nyugati és északi országokhoz viszonyítva a nők és anyák foglalkoztatottsági aránya alacsonyabb. A 0–2 éves korú gyermeket nevelő anyák foglalkoztatottsági aránya – Lengyelország kivételével – különösen alacsony. A munka-család egyensúly mutatói és a nemek közötti bérkülönbségek tekintetében szintén gyenge teljesítmény mutatkozik. A V4 országokban az anyák rossz munkaerőpiaci helyzete a nemzeti családpolitikák sajátosságaira vezethetők vissza: hosszú szülői szabadság, amely a 2 éves kor alatti gyermekek esetében meglehetősen korlátozott gyermekgondozási lehetőségekkel párosul. Ez alól Lengyelország az egyetlen kivétel, amely rövidebb, azaz 1 év szülői szabadságot biztosít. Annak ellenére, hogy a szülői szabadságot mindkét szülő igénybe veheti, igen ritka, hogy kizárólagosan az apák használják fel azt. A vállalati szemlélet is magyarázhatja az anyák kedvezőtlen munkaerőpiaci helyzetét. A részmunkaidős és a rugalmas munkaidős foglalkoztatás különösen hasznos lenne, ezeket a lehetőségeket azonban más Európai országokhoz viszonyítva csak igen ritkán alkalmazzák a V4 országokban

The Visegrad 4 countries are characterized by low female and maternal employment rates compared to other Western and Nordic countries. Employment rates of mothers with children aged 0-2 years old are especially low, except in Poland. Work-family balance indicators and gender wage gaps are also unfavorable. The poor labor market situation of mothers in V4 countries has to do with the peculiarities of the national family policies: excessively long parental leaves coupled with poor childcare coverage for children under the age of 2. The only exception is Poland, which provides a shorter leave of 1 year. Though parental leaves are aimed at both parents, the provision of leaves for the exclusive use of fathers is low. Company-level corporate attitudes also play a role. Specifically, part-time work and time flexibility of working hours could be useful tools, however, they are scarcely used in V4 countries compared to other countries in Europe.

This paper reports the results of a Blinder-Oaxaca style decomposition analysis on Hungarian matched employer-employee data to study the gender pay-gap. We carry out the decomposition by Random Forest regressions. The raw gap in our horizon (2008-2016) is increasing, but we find that the wage structure effects are rather stable, thus the rise in the gap is due to the disappearance of the formerly negative composition effects. Graphical analysis sheds light on interesting non-linear relationships; some of them can be readily interpreted by the previous literature. A Classification and Regression Tree analysis suggests that complicated interaction patterns exist in the data. We identify segments of the Hungarian labour market that are most and least exposed to gender-dependent wage determination. Our findings lend support to the idea that an important part of the gender wage gap is attributable to monopsonistic competition with gender-dependent supply elasticities.

Exploiting a change in reporting defaults and the implied audit threat in Hungary, we demonstrate that a substantial portion of employees and the self-employed reporting to earn the minimum wage have much higher earnings in reality. This can be seen from their sharp but temporary jump to the new reporting default, a twofold increase in reported earnings. Consistent with misreporting, the response is concentrated both spatially and by employer and the distribution of covariates around the threshold exhibits anomalies. Requiring individuals reporting to earn the minimum wage to pay higher taxes or ask for explicit exceptions increases reported earnings for some and decreases formal employment for others, suggesting a trade-off for taxation. We formalize the empirical findings in a model of minimum wage taxation where earnings underreporting around the minimum wage would justify a move towards higher taxation of those earnings, more aligned with a prevalent international practice.

In this paper we show experimentally that conditional cooperation, a phenomenon described in the private provision of public goods, is also present in group contests, where participants’ contributions to their group performance partially determines if they overcome a rival group. This environment allows us to identify new determinants of conditional cooperation. We observe conditional cooperation in successful groups and in groups where members contribute more than rivals (even if they lose), but it vanishes in those groups that lose the contest due to low group performance. A random-effect linear panel regression analysis with an extensive set of controls confirms the findings.

Ez a tanulmány bemutatja a közgazdaságtudományi kutatói szakma területén tapasztalható nemek közötti egyenlőtlenségeket három visegrádi ország vonatkozásában. A foglalkoztatottság tekintetében a nemek közötti eltérés mértéke az élvonalba tartozó intézményekben megegyezik az Egyesült Államokban és más nyugati országokban tapasztalt mértékkel. A kevésbé előkelő helyre rangsorolt intézményekben azonban ez a különbség kisebb, sőt némely esetben a nők javára fordul át. Amennyiben az intézményi korlátok hoznak létre ilyen mintát – erre utal a korábbi szakirodalom – a tudományos intézmények befogadóbbá tételével potenciálisan megszüntethetőek lennének az élvonalba tartozó intézményekben tapasztalt különbségek. Tanulmányunkban néhány gyakorlati javaslatot vitatunk meg.

This paper shows descriptive evidence about the gender disparities in economics profession in three Visegrad countries. We show that the employment gender gap in highly ranked institutions is in par with the gap found in the United States and in other Western countries. However, the gap is smaller and sometimes even reversed at lower ranked institutions. To the extent that these patterns are due to institutional constraints – as suggested by previous literature – making academia more inclusive would have a potential to close the gap in higher ranked institutions. Some practical suggestions are discussed.

2013-ban széleskörű centralizációs folyamat indult el a magyar közoktatásban, melynek során minden, addig önkormányzati fenntartásban lévő iskola egy állami intézményfenntartó központhoz került. A tanulmány célja, hogy megvizsgálja ennek a centralizációs folyamatnak a diákok tesztpontszámaira gyakorolt hatását mind általános iskolai, mind pedig középiskolai szinten. További cél ezeknek a hatásoknak a szintén 2013-ban indult szakképzési reform hatásaitól való elkülönítése. Az elemzés különbségek különbsége módszert és hozzáadott érték modelleket használ fixhatásokkal keverve. Arra az eredményre jut, hogy 6. és 8. évfolyamon nem volt kimutatható hatása a centralizációnak, sem az általános iskolai, sem pedig a szerkezetváltó gimnáziumi képzésekben. Még 10. évfolyamon sem mutatható ki a 2013-at követő teljes időszakra vonatkozó átlagos hatás, csak 2015-ben és ’17-ben figyelhető meg átmeneti, 0,05 szórásegységnyi negatív centralizációs hatás a tesztpontszámokra. A centralizáció és a szakképzési reform hatásainak elkülönítését célzó modell alapján azonban valószínűsíthető, hogy ezek az átmeneti hatások is elsősorban a reform negatív hatásaira vezethetők vissza. Utóbbi egy szórásegység 9-16%-ával csökkentette a szakközépiskolások pontszámait.

This paper provides a general equilibrium model of income tax evasion. As functions of the share of income reported, the paper contributes an analytic derivation of the tax elasticity of taxable income, the welfare cost of the tax, and government revenue as a percent of output. It shows how an increase in the tax rate causes the tax elasticity and welfare cost to increase in magnitude by more than with zero evasion. Keeping constant the ratio of income tax revenue to output, as shown to be consistent with certain US evidence, a rising productivity of the goods sector induces less evasion and thereby allows tax rate reduction. The paper derives conditions for a stable share of income tax revenue in output with dependence upon the tax elasticity of reporting income. Examples are provided with less and more productive economies in terms of the tax elasticity of reported income, the welfare cost of taxation and the tax revenue as a percent of output, with sensitivity analysis with respect to leisure preference and goods productivity. Discussion focuses on how the tax evasion analysis may help explain such fiscal tax policy as the postwar US income tax rate reductions with discussion of tax acts and government fiscal multipliers. Fiscal policy with tax evasion included shows how tax rate reduction induces less tax evasion, a lower welfare cost of taxation, and makes for a stable income tax share of output.