Anna Lovasz | Institute of Economics Hungarian Academy of Sciences (original) (raw)
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Papers by Anna Lovasz
Public funding drives much of the recent growth of college degree supply in Europe, but few indic... more Public funding drives much of the recent growth of college degree supply in Europe, but few indicators are available to assess its optimal level. In this paper, we investigate an indicator of college skills usage -the fraction of college graduates employed in "college" occupations. propose to identify "college" occupations based on withinoccupation college wage premia; we build on their strategy to study the local-labor-market relationship between the share of college graduates in the population and the use of college skills. Empirical results based on worker-level data from NUTS-4 districts in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia suggest a positive relationship, thus supporting the presence of an endogenous influence of the number of skilled workers on the demand for them.
We provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the long-term effects of the 50 percent public sect... more We provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the long-term effects of the 50 percent public sector wage increase initiated by the government in 2002 in order to improve the relative situation of public sector workers. The aim of this policy was to attract high quality workers to the public sector, and to counteract the problem of "brain drain," the loss of high-skilled workers to abroad. To study the effects on the public-private income gap -and on highskilled workers in particular -we employ empirical methods that allow us to take differences in the entire wage distribution (quantile regressions), workforce and firm composition (decomposition), as well as various potential biases (corrections for underreported wages and workplace characteristics) into account. Our results indicate that there is a large income premium in favor of the private sector at the higher end of the income distribution, especially once we account for worker and firm characteristics, which suggests that the same person earns substantially less in the public sector. This is especially pronounced for high-skilled workers. The 50 percent increase initially improved the relative income of public sector workers, but in the longer run, income gaps returned to close to the pre-reform level and the distributional differences remained.
The overall gender wage gap fell from .31 to .15 between 1986 and 2003 following the transition t... more The overall gender wage gap fell from .31 to .15 between 1986 and 2003 following the transition to a free market in Hungary. During the same time period, firms faced increased competition from both new domestic and foreign firms due to the rapid liberalization measures implemented by the government. Becker's (1957) model of employer taste discrimination implies that employers that discriminate against women may be forced out of the market by competition in the long run, leading to a fall in the gender wage gap. I test this implication using data from the Hungarian Wage and Earnings Survey covering 1986-2003. I estimate the effect of variation in various measures of product market competition, including trade variables, on the within-firm endowment-adjusted gender wage gap, making use of the fact that I am able to follow firms over time. The estimates show a significant negative relationship between product market competition and the within-firm gender wage gap.
In this paper we seek to provide new empirical evidence on the relative productivities and wages ... more In this paper we seek to provide new empirical evidence on the relative productivities and wages of various worker groups (by gender, age, and education), based on longitudinal matched employer-employee data from Hungary covering 1986-2005. We estimate the productivity and wage gaps from firm-level production functions and wage equations, using firm-level data on productive inputs and output, wage costs, and the demographic composition of the work force obtained from the linked worker data. This methodology allows us to assess whether productive differences can account for the wage gaps between worker groups, as well as the evolution of these gaps following the transition to a free market.
Public funding drives much of the recent growth of college degree supply in Europe, but few indic... more Public funding drives much of the recent growth of college degree supply in Europe, but few indicators are available to assess its optimal level. In this paper, we investigate an indicator of college skills usage -the fraction of college graduates employed in "college" occupations. propose to identify "college" occupations based on withinoccupation college wage premia; we build on their strategy to study the local-labor-market relationship between the share of college graduates in the population and the use of college skills. Empirical results based on worker-level data from NUTS-4 districts in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia suggest a positive relationship, thus supporting the presence of an endogenous influence of the number of skilled workers on the demand for them.
We provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the long-term effects of the 50 percent public sect... more We provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the long-term effects of the 50 percent public sector wage increase initiated by the government in 2002 in order to improve the relative situation of public sector workers. The aim of this policy was to attract high quality workers to the public sector, and to counteract the problem of "brain drain," the loss of high-skilled workers to abroad. To study the effects on the public-private income gap -and on highskilled workers in particular -we employ empirical methods that allow us to take differences in the entire wage distribution (quantile regressions), workforce and firm composition (decomposition), as well as various potential biases (corrections for underreported wages and workplace characteristics) into account. Our results indicate that there is a large income premium in favor of the private sector at the higher end of the income distribution, especially once we account for worker and firm characteristics, which suggests that the same person earns substantially less in the public sector. This is especially pronounced for high-skilled workers. The 50 percent increase initially improved the relative income of public sector workers, but in the longer run, income gaps returned to close to the pre-reform level and the distributional differences remained.
The overall gender wage gap fell from .31 to .15 between 1986 and 2003 following the transition t... more The overall gender wage gap fell from .31 to .15 between 1986 and 2003 following the transition to a free market in Hungary. During the same time period, firms faced increased competition from both new domestic and foreign firms due to the rapid liberalization measures implemented by the government. Becker's (1957) model of employer taste discrimination implies that employers that discriminate against women may be forced out of the market by competition in the long run, leading to a fall in the gender wage gap. I test this implication using data from the Hungarian Wage and Earnings Survey covering 1986-2003. I estimate the effect of variation in various measures of product market competition, including trade variables, on the within-firm endowment-adjusted gender wage gap, making use of the fact that I am able to follow firms over time. The estimates show a significant negative relationship between product market competition and the within-firm gender wage gap.
In this paper we seek to provide new empirical evidence on the relative productivities and wages ... more In this paper we seek to provide new empirical evidence on the relative productivities and wages of various worker groups (by gender, age, and education), based on longitudinal matched employer-employee data from Hungary covering 1986-2005. We estimate the productivity and wage gaps from firm-level production functions and wage equations, using firm-level data on productive inputs and output, wage costs, and the demographic composition of the work force obtained from the linked worker data. This methodology allows us to assess whether productive differences can account for the wage gaps between worker groups, as well as the evolution of these gaps following the transition to a free market.