Hungarian Economic Review

David Hume’s place in the history of economic thought

Tamás Dusek — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:17:03 +0000

The paper examines a total of 43 books dealing with the history of economic thought to see how David Hume’s economics is presented in them. In order to determine Hume’s relative position, special attention is given to Adam Smith, James Steuart, Richard Cantillon, and Francis Hutcheson, who are historically and thematically close to him. The picture that emerges is much more nuanced than that presented in textbooks on the theory of money and international trade. The greatest confusion in the interpretation of Hume’s views on monetary theory stems from the fact that he had two basic theories with two different methods of analysis of changes in the quantity of money relating to two different questions. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, Hume was regarded as a precursor by those who thought in terms of macroaggregates, such as monetarists and Keynesian advocates of aggregate demand stimulation, while more sophisticated and less common approaches, which took into account the effects of money supply growth on relative prices, price structure, and income redistribution, tended to criticise Hume and favour Cantillon instead.

The financial performance of Hungarian companies and its impact on selecting the appropriate company valuation method

András Takács — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This study analyses the financial performance trends of 2083 Hungarian companies operating in various sectors between 2020 and 2024. The study aims to map the development of the most important performance indicators (shareholders’ equity, sales revenue and after-tax profit), identify differences between sectors and examine the impact of these trends on the selection of the appropriate company valuation method. Results indicate that after-tax profit was the most volatile in agriculture, followed by industry, services and trade. In general, the growth rate of profits was unable to keep pace with the growth rate of net assets. Consequently, the asset-based approach gained significant ground in determining the market value of companies, as opposed to the income-based approach, the traditionally dominant valuation method.

What do surveys on marital preferences reveal about inequality trends, and how can they guide method selection?

Anna Naszódi — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

By analysing the joint educational distribution of couples in multiple generations, we can infer both changes in educational homophily and trends in inequality between groups with differing income-generating abilities. These data are available for far more countries and decades than individual or household level income data. Thereby, they allow us to document inequality trends in societies and periods that have not previously been analysed with microdata. To study inequality dynamics using couples’ data, however, one needs to apply methods that control for changes across generations in the structural availability of potential partners with various traits. It is well documented that empirical findings on homophily trends in general – and particularly for the United States in recent decades – are highly sensitive to the choice of method applied. Method selection must therefore be undertaken with particular care. In this study, we draw on Pew Research Center’s surveys conducted in 2010 and 2017, which capture Americans’ self-declared preferences regarding the educational attainment of spouses and partners. Compared to analyses based on a single survey wave, our approach has the advantage of disentangling generational and age effects, allowing us to measure the generation-specific preferences at the core of our research independently of life-course changes in respondents’ preferences. Our analysis confirms the conclusion of an earlier study based on data from a single survey year: namely, that the generation-specific preferences of Americans born after World War II exhibit a U-shaped pattern. The robustness of this pattern to controlling for the age-effects provides an even stronger basis for challenging the applicability of a method widely used in the literature – particularly up to the late 2010s – for studying revealed preferences. At the same time, it lends even stronger support to a recently proposed alternative method.

Cutting through the noise about the impact of AI on employment

Andrea Szalavetz — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper presents a critical analysis of the literature and anecdotal examples to illustrate the ‘noise’ that makes it difficult to assess the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the labour market. It analyses conflicting conclusions and predictions regarding the timeline of AI development, AI’s ability to replace human labour, and its impact on productivity and skill differentials. It shows that although the unprecedented rapid development of AI means that more and more tasks can be automated, the relationship between the theoretical capabilities of foundational AI models and the actual automation of automatable tasks is not linear. As an outcome of the interaction of numerous factors, the impact of technology on employment will vary from occupation to occupation. The study applies the concept of ‘skill-biased technological change’ to the AI era. It concludes that as the automation of knowledge-intensive tasks performed by graduate workers becomes easier and the number of tasks that can be automated expands rapidly, shifting labour market demand in favour of the skilled will become manifest within the category of graduate employees. Demand is expected to decline not only for inexperienced recent graduates, but also for low- to medium-skilled graduates. Competition for graduate jobs will intensify at an unprecedented rate. Only the best graduate employees will be able to retain their jobs. This means that the qualifications and skills of graduate employees whose performance is merely adequate will be devalued by AI, irrespective of the fact that these qualifications and skills had been both socially and individually quite expense to acquire. The devaluation of qualifications foreshadows a crisis in the current structure of the education system, while the devaluation of skills will lead to identity and existential crises for the individual degree holders as well as to a social crisis.

Labour market demand and supply in Hungary

Réka Mészáros — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines labour market demand and supply in Hungary, with a focus on geographical disparities and their evolution over time. The study analyses the interaction of two key processes. First, since the 2008 economic crisis, the Hungarian labour market has been tightening, reflected in a decreasing unemployment rate and an increasing vacancy rate. Second, the Hungarian labour force remains highly immobile, with a low willingness to commute or to relocate for employment opportunities. As a result, the Hungarian labour market can be divided into regional and county-level local markets. The article investigates, whether the overall tightening of the labour market has led to a reduction in geographical supply and demand disparities. Following a descriptive analysis of regional and county-level labour market conditions, we calculate indices to measure these disparities. The findings show that, geographical disparities in the Hungarian labour market have not decreased since the 2008 crisis. We explain this outcome with variables of the matching function, matching efficiency, and stock data. The analysis is based on data from Eurostat, the Central Bureau for Statistics (Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, abbreviated as: KSH), and the National Employment Service of Hungary (Nemzeti Foglalkoztatási Hivatal, abbreviated as: NFSZ).

Az MTA IX. Osztálya Gazdálkodástudományi Bizottságának publikációs nívódíjai – 2024

Ágnes Wimmer, Tamara Keszey, Balázs Heidrich — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Az MTA IX. Osztálya Gazdálkodástudományi Bizottságának Ipar- és Vállalatgazdaságtan Albizottsága, Marketingtudományi Albizottsága és Vezetés- és Szervezéstudományi Albizottsága évente díjazza a kiemelkedő tudományos műveket. Az albizottságok a publikációs nívódíjjal kívánják elismerni és ösztönözni az akadémiai kollégák magas színvonalú publikációs munkáját.