Péter Elek

Centre for Economic and Regional Studies · Institute of Economics

The objective of generic drug policies in most countries is defined from a disinvestment perspective: reduction in expenditures without compromising health outcomes. However, in countries with restricted access of patients to original patented drugs, the objective of generic drug policies can also be defined from an investment perspective: health g...

In 2010–2012, new outpatient service locations were established in poor Hungarian micro-regions. We exploit this quasi-experiment to estimate the extent of substitution between outpatient and inpatient care. Fixed-effects Poisson models on individual-level panel data for years 2008–2015 show that the number of outpatient visits increased by 19% and...

We analyze the timing, magnitude, and income dependence of pharmaceutical panic buying around the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Hungary. We use district‐level monthly and daily administrative data on detailed categories of pharmaceutical purchases, merge them to income statistics, and estimate multilevel panel models. Our main results are as...

We examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the screening, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in Hungary based on administrative data until June 2021, covering three pandemic waves. After correcting for trend and seasonality, the number of mammography examinations decreased by 68% in 2020q2, was around its usual level in 2020q3 and wa...

We analyze the causal effect of involuntary retirement on detailed indicators of healthcare use and mortality. We leverage a pension reform in Hungary which forced public sector workers above the statutory retirement age to full time retirement. Using rich administrative data, we find that on the 3‐year horizon, involuntary retirement decreases the...

Summary: We used time series models to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of patients and treatment episodes in lung, breast and colorectal cancer in Hungary. The number of patients decreased by 10-20% at the beginning of the pandemic and has not returned to pre-pandemic levels in the examined period. The number of treatment...

Objective During the COVID-19 pandemic, health system resources were reallocated to provide care for patients with COVID-19, limiting access for others. Patients themselves also constrained their visits to healthcare providers. In this study, we analysed the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on the new diagnoses of lung, colorectal and breast c...

Using data from the COVID-19 questionnaire of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we investigate the time patterns of precautionary health behaviours of individuals aged 50 years and above during the summer of 2020, an easing phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. We also examine how these health behaviours differ by t...

We examine regional differences in diabetes within Europe, and relate them to variations in socio-economic conditions, comorbidities, health behaviour and diabetes management. We use the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) data of 15 European countries and 28,454 individuals, who participated both in the 4th and 7th (year 2011...

We analyse the causal effect of job loss on disability insurance enrolment on a five-year horizon and the implications on health expenditure. Using administrative panel data from Hungary, we follow individuals displaced due to a mass lay-off and compare their labour force status to non-laid-off individuals with similar employment and health history...

Background: The high ratio of caesarean sections (C-sections) is a major public health issue in the developed world; but its implications on maternal mental health are not well understood. Methods: We use individual-level administrative panel data from Hungary between 2010 and 2016 to analyze the relationship between caesarean delivery and antid...

Objective We analyse the effect of primary care availability on antibiotic consumption and on the quality of antibiotic prescribing behaviour. Design Retrospective panel design, secondary analysis of settlement-level administrative panel data (n=2320 settlements, T=72 months). Participants and setting We analyse antibiotic consumption of the popu...

We study the undeclared work patterns of Hungarian employees in relatively stable jobs, using a panel dataset that matches individual-level self-reported Labour Force Survey data with administrative records of the Pension Directorate for 2001–2006. We estimate the determinants of undeclared work using Heckman-type random-effects panel probit models...

In this paper we illustrate how the incorporation of behavioural responses and dynamic effects alters the conclusions of static household microsimulation models on the distributional impacts of economic policies. Based on Hungary’s Household Budget and Living Conditions Survey, we model household consumption using the demand system approach of Cree...

Using individual‐level administrative panel data from Hungary, we estimate causal effects of retirement on outpatient and inpatient care expenditures and pharmaceutical expenditures. Our identification strategy is based on an increase in the official early retirement age of women, using that the majority of women retire upon reaching that age. Acco...

External price referencing (EPR) is applied more and more frequently worldwide by payers to control pharmaceutical prices. Together with the parallel trade of pharmaceuticals, EPR may result in lower pharmaceutical prices in higher-income countries and higher prices in lower-income countries, which implies that pharmaceutical expenditure grows more...

In 2010-2012, new outpatient service locations were established in Hungarian micro-regions, which had lacked such capacities before. We exploit this quasi-experiment to estimate the effect of geographical accessibility on outpatient case numbers using both individual-level and semi-aggregate panel data. We find a 24-27 per cent increase of case num...

Tanulmányunkban a társasági adókulcs 2009–2011 közötti csökkentésének vállalati adófizetésekre gyakorolt hatását becsüljük vállalati szintű paneladatok alapján. Először keresztmetszeti regressziós modellel vizsgáljuk az átlagos effektív adórátára (azaz a tényleges adókötelezettség és az adózás előtti eredmény arányára) ható vállalati jellemzőket. M...

A 2007–13-as európai uniós fejlesztési periódus egyik sok figyelmet kapott infrastrukturális fejlesztési eleme a járóbeteg-szakellátási kapacitások fejlesztése volt. Cikkünkben a zöldmezős kistérségi járóbeteg-szakellátó központok kialakításának hatásait értékeljük. Az eltelt idő rövidsége és az ellátórendszer komplexitása miatt a tanulmányunkban a...

A tanulmányban a KSH munkaerő-felmérésének 1998 és 2010 közötti, valamint az ONYF járulékfizetési adatbázisának 2000 és 2006 közötti mikroszintű paneladatai alapján vizsgáljuk a közszférát elhagyók számát, összetételét és későbbi munkapiaci viselkedését. Megállapítjuk, hogy a közszféra versenyszférához képest megfigyelt nagyobb stabilitása abból ad...

Az Egészségügyi Minisztérium, illetve a Nemzeti Erőforrás Minisztérium és az Egészségügyi Világszervezet között 2008-2009, valamint 2010-2011 között, két együttműködési megállapodás keretében olyan „monitoring- eszköz” került kifejlesztésre, amely általános módszertani megalapozásként szolgál az egészségpolitikai intézkedések hatásainak nyomon köve...

We estimate a double hurdle (DH) model of the Hungarian wage distribution assuming censoring at the minimum wage and wage under-reporting (i.e. compensation consisting of the minimum wage, subject to taxation, and an unreported cash supplement). We estimate the probability of under-reporting for minimum wage earners, simulate their genuine earnings...

It is now common knowledge that the simple quadratic ARCH process has a regularly varying tail even when generated by a normally distributed noise, and the tail behaviour is well-understood under more general conditions as well. Much less studied is the case of [beta]-ARCH-type processes, i.e. when the conditional variance is a 2[beta]-power functi...

A tanulmány az ingatlanadó hatásait elemezi a magyar adórendszer keretein belül. Vizsgálja a 2009-ben elfogadott (és azóta az Alkotmánybíróság által részben megsemmisített) vagyonadó szerinti változatot, valamint hipotetikus alternatív változatokat. Nemzetközi összehasonlításban is bemutatja a Magyarországon jelenleg hatályos vagyont terhelő elvoná...

We investigate the extremal clustering behaviour of stationary time series that possess two regimes, where the switch is governed by a hidden two-state Markov chain. We also suppose that the process is conditionally Markovian in each latent regime. We prove under general assumptions that above high thresholds these models behave approximately as a...

In this paper we suggest solutions to the actuaries, facing the problem of estimating future mortality tables, especially in cases where there is a lack of relevant data and where the tendencies are not easy to estimate directly. We propose the utilization of external sources of information in the form of other, published mortality tables and use f...

In this paper we analyse the most important mechanisms of the Hungarian economy with the help of a medium-sized quarterly macroeconomic model developed jointly by the Economic Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance and the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. After introducing the building blocks of the model we invest...

Az adórendszer reformja során több, egymásnak gyakran ellentmondó szempont (torzító hatás, társadalmi igazságosság stb.) mérlegelésére van szükség. A közgazdaságtanban használt elméleti adózási modellek segítenek megérteni a különbözõ szempontok közötti átváltásokat (tradeoff) és hozzájárulhatnak az adott körülmények között optimális adórendszer ki...

We examine the tail behaviour and extremal cluster characteristics of two-state Markov-switching autoregressive models where the first regime behaves like a random walk, the second regime is a stationary autoregression, and the generating noise is light-tailed. Under additional technical conditions we prove that the stationary solution has asymptot...

A conditionally heteroscedastic model, different from the more commonly used autoregressive moving average-generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (ARMA-GARCH) processes, is established and analysed here. The time-dependent variance of innovations passing through an ARMA filter is conditioned on the lagged values of the generated p...

We propose a regime switching autoregressive model and apply it to analyze daily water discharge series of River Tisza in Hungary. The dynamics is governed by two regimes, along which both the autoregressive coefficients and the innovation distributions are altering, moreover, the hidden regime indicator process is allowed to be non-Markovian. Afte...

A tanulmányban a Pénzügyminisztérium gazdaságpolitikai fõosztálya és az MTA Köz­gazdaságtudományi Intézete által kifejlesztett középméretû negyedéves makrogaz­ dasági modell segítségével elemezzük a magyar gazdaság legfontosabb mechaniz­ musait. A modellezés során követett alapelvek és a modell blokkjainak bemutatása után egy forgatókönyv-elemzés k...

We present the analysis aimed at the estimation of flood risks of Tisza River in Hungary on the basis of daily river discharge data registered in the last 100 years. The deseasonalised series has skewed and leptokurtic distribution and various methods suggest that it possesses substantial long memory. This motivates the attempt to fit a fractional...