Műhelytanulmányok
- László Csató, Dóra Gréta Petróczy
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan
- 1
National teams from different continents can play against each other only in afew sports competitions. Therefore, a reasonable aim is maximising the number of intercontinental games in world cups, as done in basketball and football, in contrast to handball and volleyball. However, this objective requires additional draw constraints that imply the violation of equal treatment. In addition, the standard draw mechanism is non-uniformly distributed on the set of valid assignments, which may lead to further distortions. Our paper analyses this novel trade-off between attractiveness and fairness through the example of the 2025 World Men's Handball Championship. We introduce a measure of inequality, which enables considering 32 sets of reasonable geographical restrictions to determine the Pareto frontier. The proposed methodology can be used by policy-makers to select the optimal set of draw constraints.
László Csató, András Gyimesi
MKE-WP-39162
- László Csató, András Gyimesi
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan
- 2
A match played in a sports tournament can be called stakeless if at least one team is indifferent to its outcome because it already has qualified or has been eliminated. Such a game threatens fairness since teams may not exert full effort without incentives. This paper suggests a novel classification for stakeless matches according to their expected outcome: they are more costly if the indifferent team is more likely to win by playing honestly. Our approach is illustrated with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the first edition of the competition with 48 teams. We propose a novel format based on imbalanced groups, which drastically reduces the probability of stakeless matches played by the strongest teams according to Monte Carlo simulations. The new design also increases the uncertainty of match outcomes and requires fewer matches. Governing bodies in sports are encouraged to consider our innovative idea in order to enhance the competitiveness of their tournaments.
- Barna Bakó, Antal Ertl, Hubert János Kiss
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan
- 3
This study investigates how present bias affects memory accuracy regarding earlier decisions in intertemporal decision-making. In a classroom experiment with university students, participants made choices between smaller, immediate rewards and larger, delayed rewards over two visits, followed by a third visit where they were asked to recall their prior decisions. Descriptive statistics reveal that participants with present bias exhibit lower memory accuracy compared to time-consistent peers, particularly in scenarios involving immediate rewards. Regression analysis confirms that motivated misremembering—recalling past decisions as more virtuous than they actually were—explains the reduced memory accuracy
- Hajdu Tamás
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 1
This paper examines the effect of temperature on emergency department (ED) visits using administrative data covering 50% of the Hungarian population and 3.52 million ED visits from 2009 to 2017. The results show that ED visit rates increase when average temperatures exceed 10°C, primarily driven by mild cases that do not result in hospitalization. Higher humidity amplifies the heat effect, which is also stronger following consecutive hot days. The findings further indicate that the impacts of climate change – both present and future – are substantial. Between 2009 and 2017, 0.66% of the ED visits were attributed to temperature changes relative to the period 1950–1989. Furthermore, by the 2050s, compared to the first 15 years of the 21st century, the annual ED visit rate is projected to rise by 1.24%–1.70%, depending on the climate scenario. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effects of high temperatures and the future impacts of climate change are disproportionately greater in lower-income districts, areas with lower general practitioner density, and among younger adults.
Mate Kormos, Robert P. Lieli, Martin Huber
MKE-WP-39086
- Mate Kormos, Robert P. Lieli, Martin Huber
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 2
We study causal inference in randomized experiments (or quasi-experiments) following a
2 x 2 factorial design. There are two treatments, denoted A and B, and units are randomly
assigned to one of four categories: treatment A alone, treatment B alone, joint treatment, or
none. Allowing for endogenous non-compliance with the two binary instruments representing
the intended assignment, as well as unrestricted interference across the two treatments, we
derive the causal interpretation of various instrumental variable estimands under more general
compliance conditions than in the literature. In general, if treatment takeup is driven by
both instruments for some units, it becomes difficult to separate treatment interaction from
treatment effect heterogeneity. We provide auxiliary conditions and various bounding strategies
that may help zero in on causally interesting parameters. As an empirical illustration, we
apply our results to a program randomly offering two different treatments, namely tutoring
and financial incentives, to first year college students, in order to assess the treatments' effects
on academic performance.
Keywords: causal inference, interaction, instrumental variables, non-compliance
JEL codes: C22, C26, C90
Bíró Anikó, Elek Péter, Prinz Dániel, Sándor László
MKE-WP-39077
- Bíró Anikó, Elek Péter, Prinz Dániel, Sándor László
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 1
This paper studies tax evasion and the contribution-benefit link in the context of maternity benefits in Hungary. Earnings and employment patterns suggest pre-pregnancy underreporting, followed by formalization of some earnings and employment during pregnancy to increase benefits. Reported earnings in small, domestic, and less productive firms bunch at the minimum wage before pregnancy and the benefit-maximizing threshold during pregnancy. Using a policy reform, the paper shows that the size of the reporting response tracks changing reporting incentives. Increases in pre-childbirth reported earnings are partially sticky after maternity leave. The results indicate that linking benefits to contributions can reduce tax evasion and improve formalization.
- Bíró Anikó, Elek Péter
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 1
We estimate the impact of firm quality -- primarily measured by firm productivity -- on the health maintenance of employees. Using linked employer-employee administrative panel data from Hungary, we analyze the dynamics of healthcare use before and after moving to a new firm. We show that moving to a more productive firm leads to higher consumption of drugs for cardiovascular conditions and more physician visits, without evidence of deteriorating physical health, and, among older workers, to lower consumption of medications for mental health conditions. The results are robust to using alternative firm quality indicators based on firm-level wages and worker flows, and to controlling for firm size, individual wage and possible peer effects. The results suggest that more productive firms have a beneficial effect on the detection of previously undiagnosed chronic physical illnesses and on mental health. Plausible mechanisms include higher quality occupational health check-ups and less stressful working conditions.
Zsolt Darvas, Lennard Welslau, Jeromin Zettelmeyer
MKE-WP-39039
- Zsolt Darvas, Lennard Welslau, Jeromin Zettelmeyer
- Makroökonómia
- 1
By consecutively applying the EU’s debt sustainability analysis through 2052, we find that EU countries must improve their primary balances during the initial four-to-seven-year adjustment period starting in 2025 and then maintain these balances at broadly stable levels. However, in most countries, fiscal adjustments in the non-ageing portion of the budget must continue and reach historically high levels. Risk factors may necessitate even greater adjustments, while policies could partially alleviate fiscal pressures. The implementation of EU country-specific recommendations related to labour markets, pension systems, and productivity has been limited, and these recommendations do not adequately address immigration and fertility-enhancing policies.
- Váry Miklós
- Makroökonómia
- 1
This paper investigates whether there have been time periods between 1999 and 2019 in Hungary when government spending has been self-financing, i.e., when the government has faced a fiscal free lunch. By self-financing, it is meant that government spending, initially financed by issuing bonds, does not lead to an increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio due to improvements in the budget balance resulted in by stimulated economic activity. Some macroeconomists think that while government spending is arguably not self-financing in normal times, it could have become self-financing in the United States (US) during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) due to 1) stronger fiscal multipliers, 2) stronger hysteresis effects, and 3) lower interest rates than usually. This paper estimates the parameters of a simple model of debt dynamics on Hungarian data to study whether these arguments also hold for an emerging small open economy, like Hungary, in which fiscal multipliers are thought to be weaker, and where interest rates increased during the GFC. It is found that government spending has not been self-financing in the short run before the GFC (1999Q1–2008Q3), has been at the edge of being expected to be self-financing in the long run, but has not actually turned out to be. During the GFC (2008Q4–2012Q4), it cannot be excluded to have been self-financing in the long run, and might have already been self-financing in the short run, as well. However, these findings are much less robust than those for the US. Between the GFC and the COVID recession (2013Q1–2019Q4), government spending was not self-financing in the short run, but was expected to be self-financing in the long run.
István Kónya
MKE-WP-39031
- István Kónya
- Makroökonómia
- 1
This paper develops a model of immigration that encompasses different channels through which immigra tion impacts native wages. The framework incorporates a frictional labor market with different outside options for immigrants and natives, local demand conditions captured by relative prices, and capital-labor substitution. The model is calibrated on labor data for the four largest European Union economies, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Three counterfactual scenarios are explored, where the adjustment speed of the capital stock and the sensitivity of domestic relative prices to immigration differ. Results shows that the impact of immigration on wages and wages inequality depends crucially on the latter factor, i.e. whether relative prices are determined by local vs. global conditions. In the former case, the migration pattern observed in the data has led to a non-negligible increase in native wage inequality. In the latter case, migration skewed towards the low-skilled has led to a (quantitatively small) decrease in native wage inequality, due to the lower wage bargaining power of immigrants who compete with native workers.