In January 2001 the Hungarian government increased the minimum wage from Ft 25,500 to Ft 40,000. One year later the wage floor rose further to Ft 50,000. The paper looks at the short-run impact of the first hike on small-firm employment and flows between employment and unemployment. It finds that the hike significantly increased labor costs and reduced employment in the small firm sector; and adversely affected the job retention and job finding probabilities of low-wage workers. While the conditions for a positive employment effect were mostly met in depressed regions spatial inequalities were amplified rather than reduced.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 43 pages Date of creation: 01 Jan 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wdi:papers:2004-644
Contact details of provider: Postal: 724 E. University Ave. Wyly Hall, Floor 1, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1234 Phone: 734 615 4566 Fax: (734) 763-5850 Email: Web page: http://www.wdi.umich.edu More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Patricia Loh).
Find related papers by JEL classification: J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy P23 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies - - - Factor and Product Markets; Industry Studies; Population R23 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)