Sum of Ranking Differences is an innovative statistical method that ranks competing solutions based on a reference point. The latter might arise naturally, or can be aggregated from the data. We provide two case studies to feature both possibilities. Apportionment and districting are two critical issues that emerge in relation to democratic elections. Theoreticians invented clever heuristics to measure malapportionment and the compactness of the shape of the constituencies, yet, there is no unique best method in either cases. Using data from Norway and the US we rank the standard methods both for the apportionment and for the districting problem. In case of apportionment, we find that all the classical methods perform reasonably well, with subtle but significant differences. By a small margin the Leximin method emerges as a winner, but — somewhat unexpectedly — the non-regular Imperiali method ties for first place. In districting, the Lee-Sallee index and a novel parametric method the so-called Moment Invariant performs the best, although the latter is sensitive to the function’s chosen parameter.

In recent years public and political debate suggested that individuals with chil- dren value the future more. We attempt to substantiate the debate and using a representative survey we investigate if the number of children (or simply having children) indeed is associated with a higher valuation of the future that we proxy with an aspect of time preferences, patience. We find that in general there is no correlation between having children and patience, though for young women with below-median income we find some weak evidence in line with the conjecture. We also show some evidence that for this subpopulation it is not having children that matters, but marital status. More precisely, young single women are less patient than other young non-single women.

The paper discusses the economic aspects of the most important questions (such as demand response or capacity allocation) related to differential pricing. First, we consider a revenue-neutral introduction of peak-load pricing. We examine under what circumstances does peak-load pricing lead to a Pareto improvement compared to uniform pricing. Second, we analyze what properties of customers make it profitable for a firm to introduce peak-load pricing. We find that on the supply side, incentives to introduce differential pricing may be technology-driven (i. e. high on-peak marginal costs) or demand-driven (i.e. low elasticity of substitution). Consumers benefit more if they can adopt to prices more flexibly. Innovative technology, such as smart meters, may help consumers benefit from real-time pricing. Such technology is expensive to install. This makes it necessary that consumers cover part of the costs. If they are myopic, or other effects of bounded rationality hinder their commitment, regulatory intervention might be needed to increase welfare. The more accessible enabling technology (price comparison websites, cheap smart meters etc.) will be, the more everyone will benefit from time-varying pricing.

We test if the political regime of a country associates with the patience of the citizens. Recent findings indicate that i) more democratic countries tend to have higher growth, and ii) patience correlates positively with economic development, suggesting a potential link between the political regime and patience. We document a positive association between the level of democracy and patience for most of the political regime indices that we use, even after controlling for region, economic development, geographical conditions, and culture. We report some evidence that political participation is behind our findings.

Since trust correlates with economic development and in turn economic development associates with political regime, we conjecture that there may be a relationship between trust and political regime. We investigate if trust aggregated on the country level correlates with the political regime. We do not find any significant association, with or without taking into account other factors (e.g. regional location, economic development, geographic conditions, culture) as well.

This study presents disparities in mortality rates of 38-41 European countires and attempts at giving explanations for these. Explanatory factors of premature (0-64 ages) and old age (above 65 years old) mortality rates are compared accordig to cause-specific diseases and genders for 2009. In addition, mortality disparities due to avoidable (preventable and treatable) diseases are analyzed on a narrower sample of countries for 2015.

The model applied in the investigations takes into account the living conditions and life-styles of the population in the given countries i.e. GDP per capita, geographical location, air-pollution, educational level, tobacco and spirit consumption habits, and health care expenditures.

The most astonishing result is connected with the effect of air pollution: this factor has a similarly big weight in increasing premature male mortality as the well-known factor, tobacco consumption. Moreover, in the case of old age male mortality air pollution even dominate the effect of smoking.

The Hungarian Labour Market Yearbook series was launched in 2000 by the Institute of Economics, in order to report on the processes and latest trends of the Hungarian labour market and employment policy, and provide an in-depth analysis of a particular subject each year.
In compiling the content of each yearbook, the intention of the editorial board is to deliver relevant and useful information on the labour market trends and the legislative and institutional background of employment policy in Hungary, and on the latest findings of Hungarian and international research studies.

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