KRTK Blog Archívum - Közgazdaság- és Regionális Tudományi Kutatóközpont

Academic recognition starts before the final decision – by Imre Fertő

Földi Adrien — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:08:16 +0000

Source: MTA Kommunikáció – https://www.flickr.com/people/mtasajto/

Academic recognition starts before the final decision

Imre Fertő

Academic prizes, appointments and honours are often treated as outcomes that reveal who has already demonstrated excellence. But recognition is also produced through institutional processes that determine who enters the field of consideration in the first place. Drawing on 35 years of nomination data from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I show that disciplinary boundaries strongly structure this earlier stage of academic recognition – and that the relatively few scholars who cross these boundaries can play an important intermediary role.

When we think about academic recognition, we tend to focus on outcomes: who won the prize, received the fellowship, secured promotion or was elected to a prestigious academy. These outcomes are visible, consequential and relatively easy to study.

Yet by the time a formal decision is made, an important part of the selection process has already happened.

Candidates first need to become candidates. They must attract support, enter institutional consideration and acquire enough legitimacy for their case to proceed. Nomination is therefore more than an administrative preliminary. It is one of the mechanisms through which academic recognition is produced.

This matters because access to recognition may already be structured long before the final vote takes place.

In a recent study, I examined this process using nominations for corresponding membership of Class IX – the Economics and Law section – of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 1990 and 2024. Rather than asking who ultimately succeeded, I asked a prior question: how is nomination support organised?

The analysis covers 13 election cycles and 468 nomination ties made by members of Class IX. It reconstructs a network connecting nominators to nominees and uses this to examine disciplinary clustering, connections between disciplinary groups and patterns of co-nomination.

Academic fields remain powerful organising structures

The first result is striking in its consistency.

Across all 13 election cycles, scholars were substantially more likely to nominate candidates from their own disciplinary group than candidates from another field. Depending on the cycle, between 68.8% and 95.2% of nominations remained within disciplinary boundaries.

This pattern could simply reflect the composition of the Academy. If there are many economists among both nominators and nominees, for example, a large number of economist-to-economist nominations might emerge almost mechanically.

To address this, I compared the observed networks with 5,000 simulated networks for each election cycle. These simulations preserved exactly how many nominations each scholar made and how many each candidate received, but randomly reassigned the connections between them.

The difference was substantial. Observed disciplinary assortativity ranged from 0.518 to 0.924 across the 13 cycles, while the simulated networks produced values centred close to zero. In every cycle, the observed disciplinary clustering was substantially greater than would be expected from the structure of nominations alone.

In other words, disciplinary boundaries were not simply labels attached to an otherwise integrated selection process. They actively structured who supported whom.

This makes intuitive sense. Supporting a candidate is not a costless expression of abstract admiration. Nominators put their own judgement and reputation behind another scholar. Expertise, familiarity and professional proximity therefore matter. Scholars are generally better placed to evaluate – and perhaps more comfortable legitimating – work originating in intellectual communities close to their own.

Seen from this perspective, disciplinary homophily is not necessarily evidence of misconduct or deliberate exclusion. But it does show that supposedly collective institutions of recognition remain strongly organised through disciplinary communities.

Boundaries can be crossed – but crossing them is not the norm

Strong disciplinary clustering does not mean that the system is completely closed.

Cross-disciplinary nominations appeared in every period. But they constituted a minority of nominations and varied considerably between election cycles. The share of nominations crossing disciplinary boundaries ranged from just 4.8% in 1993 to 31.3% in 2021. There was no clear long-run trend towards either greater integration or greater closure.

More importantly, boundary crossing was not always evenly distributed among nominators.

In several cycles, scholars who nominated candidates across multiple disciplinary groups were also disproportionately active nominators. This suggests a distinction between two quite different forms of openness.

One possibility is a generally integrated system in which many participants routinely reach across disciplinary boundaries. Another is an institution that remains largely segmented, but in which a relatively small number of individuals serve as bridges between its different parts.

The evidence points more towards the second pattern.

This distinction matters because counting cross-disciplinary nominations alone can exaggerate how integrated a system really is. Ten cross-field nominations generated by ten different scholars describe a different institutional environment from ten cross-field nominations generated by one or two particularly active intermediaries.

Academic institutions can therefore be simultaneously strongly segmented and partially connected.

Recognition is not organised through one stable coalition

Nomination also has a collective dimension. Different nominators may repeatedly support the same candidates, producing patterns of co-nomination.

Looking at these relationships reveals a third feature of the system. Support was sometimes more concentrated and sometimes more diffuse, but it was generally not organised around a single dominant and persistent coalition.

This is important because co-nomination should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of coordination. Two scholars can support the same candidate independently. The network can therefore show patterns of alignment without telling us whether explicit coalition-building took place.

What it does show is that disciplinary closure, cross-field brokerage and the concentration of co-nomination are distinct features of the nomination process. A cycle can display relatively high levels of cross-disciplinary nomination but diffuse co-nomination, as in 2012. In another period, boundary crossing can coexist with somewhat more concentrated patterns of support, as in 2021.

There is therefore no single scale running from a “closed” to an “open” academic system. Institutional selection has several dimensions that need to be examined separately.

Across the whole period, the nomination system is best described as combining persistent disciplinary clustering, variable levels of boundary crossing and changing levels of co-nomination concentration.

Previous recognition may also matter before recognition

A supplementary analysis provides another piece of the puzzle.

Among scholars who had already entered the nomination process, previous nomination support was positively associated with the number of nominations they received in later cycles. In the fullest model, each additional prior nomination was associated with roughly a 12% increase in the expected number of nominations received in the current cycle, holding the other included characteristics constant.

This result should be interpreted cautiously. The analysis is descriptive and cannot establish a causal Matthew effect in which recognition mechanically produces further recognition.

Nevertheless, it draws attention to an important possibility: cumulative advantage may operate not only through prizes, publications or prestigious appointments, but already through repeated access to the nomination stage itself.

Visibility can accumulate before the final recognition is awarded.

To understand academic recognition, study its entry points

The broader implication is that research on academic recognition risks starting too late.

Studies of prizes, academy membership, promotion or funding understandably focus on final outcomes. But those outcomes emerge from an earlier infrastructure of attention and support. Before committees choose between candidates, institutional processes determine who becomes a plausible candidate at all.

The Hungarian Academy case shows that this infrastructure is far from socially or intellectually neutral. It is structured by disciplinary proximity, selective bridges between fields, changing patterns of shared support and the accumulation of previous nomination visibility.

This does not mean that nomination networks reveal why individual scholars supported particular candidates. The analysis cannot observe informal discussions, motivations or evaluative disagreements, and co-nomination is not proof of explicit coordination. Relatively small numbers of nominations in individual cycles also make strong claims about change over time inappropriate.

But precisely because nominations precede final selection, they offer a useful window into academic gatekeeping.

They shift the analytical question from “Who received recognition?” to “How did they become recognisable as candidates for recognition?”

That distinction has implications well beyond academies. Grant competitions, prizes, senior appointments, fellowship elections and other forms of peer selection all contain comparable entry points. Studying these earlier stages may reveal inequalities and institutional boundaries that remain invisible if researchers look only at final outcomes.

Future research could compare nomination networks across disciplinary settings, connect them with career and publication data, and examine whether gender, institutional affiliation or generational position shape access to nomination. These are dimensions the present analysis does not directly address.

Academic recognition is not simply bestowed at the end of a selection process. It is progressively assembled. Understanding who gets recognised therefore requires understanding the networks through which candidates first become visible, legitimate and institutionally selectable.

This post is based on the article: Imre Fertő, “Disciplinary Bloc Formation and Inter-Bloc Crossing in the Nomination Network of Class IX of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1990–2024)”, published in Szociológiai Szemle. The article is available at: https://doi.org/10.51624/SzocSzemle.22078

Seeking for security, escaping from insecurity: how ontological security can explain retirement migration to Hungary? by Krisztina Németh

Földi Adrien — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 07:52:01 +0000

AI generated illustration by freepik

Seeking for security, escaping from insecurity:
how ontological security can explain retirement migration to Hungary?

by Krisztina Németh

Introduction

In recent years, traditionally preferred destinations of international retirement migration (IRM) are becoming increasingly unaffordable for older adults, thus, new geographical frontiers have been emerging (Iorio, 2020; Toyota, 2022; Koós et al., 2025). Not only geographies, but the range of social groups involved in this type of migration is also widening (King et al., 2021). Recent research suggests that IRM is no longer the privilege of relatively affluent individuals seeking a better life; rather, a new social group within IRM has emerged with a lower social position and smaller pensions, seeking to live better lives in less attractive places that offer tranquility and lower living costs (Botterill, 2017; Iorio, 2020). This tendency put Hungary, among other countries, „on the map of IRM.” Interestingly, Hungary’s remote, peripheral settlements have also become destinations for many older migrants from different countries (Koós et al., 2025).

Our research distinguished two groups of older migrants living in these places: Western migrants (especially from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands) relocating to Somogy County’s small and remote villages, and Eastern migrants coming from Ukraine (Transcarpathia) settling in Szabolcs-Szatmár County near the Hungarian-Ukrainian border. Our research sought to understand these two groups of migrants’ motivations and strategies to relocate, and examined how they can create or re-create their sense of security in many senses through these strategies. With this question, we linked Giddens’s ontological security concept to the IRM literature. Ontological security means a fundamental human need for a sense of order and predictability constituted by well-known and familiar circumstances in social, affective, and material sense, and by the constant reaffirmation of others who “recognize [one’s] behaviour as appropriate or reasonable” (Giddens, 1991, p. 191).

Research question

In this paper, we aimed to reveal the complex motivations for relocation of both groups of older migrants, and to understand what makes Hungary (especially its peripheral counties and settlements) attractive in their eyes. We also examined the similarities in the migration stories of Western and Eastern migrants and how the term of ontological security, together with our empirical results, can enrich the international literature on IRM.

Methods

Our research involved quantitative and qualitative parts. Quantitative analysis not only revealed that Hungary became a target country for older foreigners in recent decades, but also showed those areas where they settled in greater numbers. Based on the quantitative data analysis, we chose two research fields for qualitative inquiry: Somogy county, where Western migrants have been moving in, and Szabolcs-Szatmár county, where Eastern migrants have been settling in greater numbers. The two research groups worked in parallel, but in close cooperation, in these two research fields by conducting semi-structured interviews with older migrants, local leaders and stakeholders. Interview guides were developed jointly to enhance the comparability of the data, while the two research groups exchanged experiences and discussed preliminary findings in a consortium workshop each year of the research.

Results

The comparative analysis of the interviews showed that the topic of insecurity (such as being discontent with the (home) state and social security it offers, anxiety, war, financial or cultural insecurity) appears in the migration narratives of both groups. This does not imply, however, that the personal experiences, circumstances of relocation, and the threats presented by Eastern and Western older migrants are analogous. As a consequence, these two groups follow partly different strategies in (re-)creating their ontological security. While Western migrants aim to reduce their cost of living, Eastern migrants increase their income by relocating to the neighbouring country, Hungary. For Western migrants, relocation in older age is an individual strategy aiming to (re-)create material security and a viable alternative for later life. For Eastern migrants, migration is a complex, multigenerational family strategy, a way of coping with diverse insecurities based on exploiting geographical proximity by daily commuting. While the roots of insecurity are more or less common (weakened trust in the state and its institutions, inadequate welfare provisions, and economic instability), which can exacerbate insecurities and fuel migration, relocation can be a means to restore a rupture of sense of security either in terms of safer living conditions, physical safety, a life free from fear, and a sense of political, ideological, and cultural belonging.

Our results also show that while older migrants articulate values which are usually related to the crises of home countries, patterns of migration are deeply embedded in the system of inequalities within Europe. This demonstrates that the term ontological security can contribute to the international literature of IRM since it gives a layered picture of different kinds of insecurities motivating relocation and displays different ways of creating security through migration.

Erőss Á.; Gábriel D.; Váradi M. M.; Kohut-Ferki J.; Németh K.; Koós B.; Tátrai P.; Kovály K. (2026): International retirement migration to Hungary : seeking to reaffirm ontological security? Journal of International Migraton and Integration

EU accession boosted Central European farm productivity – but the gains did not last – by Lukáš Čechura, Štefan Bojnec, Jan Falkowski, Imre Fertő

Földi Adrien — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 09:29:57 +0000

Illustration: Nikolett Emmert, Hungary – pexels.com

EU accession boosted Central European farm productivity
– but the gains did not last

Lukáš Čechura, Štefan Bojnec, Jan Falkowski, Imre Fertő

When ten Central and Eastern European countries joined the European Union in 2004, agriculture was expected to be one of the sectors to benefit most. Access to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), larger markets and new investment opportunities promised to help farmers modernise and close the productivity gap with Western Europe.

Two decades later, the picture is more complicated.

In a new study, we examine how productivity developed on cereal-producing farms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia between 2004 and 2017. Rather than finding a steady process of convergence following EU accession, we observe something closer to a productivity surge followed by a loss of momentum.

This matters because it suggests that providing farmers with access to capital and technology may be much easier than sustaining productivity growth over the longer term.

EU accession created an opportunity for agricultural catch-up

There were good reasons to expect EU membership to transform agriculture in the new member states. Farmers gained access to CAP payments, while integration into the common market reduced barriers to trade and increased opportunities for investment.

One important expectation was that subsidies would relax financial constraints. Farms that had previously struggled to finance machinery and other investments could modernise their production. In principle, this should have allowed them to use land, labour, capital and other inputs more productively.

To assess whether this happened, we use Farm Accountancy Data Network data and study cereal-producing farms over the period from accession in 2004 to 2017. We focus on total factor productivity (TFP). Unlike simple measures such as output per worker or yield per hectare, TFP considers several inputs simultaneously and asks how effectively they are transformed into outputs.

We also separate productivity developments into three components: technological change, technical efficiency and scale efficiency. This distinction is important. A farm can become more productive because better technology becomes available, because existing technology is used more efficiently, or because the farm moves closer to an economically appropriate scale of operation.

The initial productivity gains did not continue

At first sight, the results provide some support for the optimistic expectations surrounding enlargement.

Productivity increased during the early years following accession. By 2017, total factor productivity was still above its 2004 level in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Slovenia followed a different trajectory and finished the period below its initial productivity level.

But comparing only 2004 and 2017 hides the most interesting part of the story.

In the Czech Republic and Hungary, productivity increased substantially during roughly the first five or six years after accession and subsequently declined by almost as much. Poland experienced the same broad pattern, although both its initial rise and later decline were more modest. Slovenia initially experienced falling productivity before recovering some of these losses later in the period.

EU accession therefore seems to have produced an initial productivity impulse rather than a permanent acceleration in productivity growth.

Technology explains much of the rise – and the subsequent slowdown

The evolution of technology closely mirrors the development of productivity.

In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, technological change followed an inverted-U pattern. Technological progress was particularly strong in the years immediately following accession before weakening later. Slovenia again differed, experiencing a more persistent decline in technological change after the first few years.

One plausible interpretation is that accession opened a window for rapid modernisation. CAP support may have eased financing constraints and enabled farms to invest in machinery and other technologies that had previously been difficult to afford.

However, the study cannot establish that subsidies caused the observed productivity changes. The relationship between agricultural subsidies and productivity is more complicated. Subsidies can facilitate investment and innovation, but they can also weaken incentives to reorganise production or allow less efficient farms to remain in operation.

The later slowdown may also reflect changing objectives within agricultural policy. As the CAP increasingly incorporated environmental goals, farms devoted more resources to environmental and other non-market outputs. Conventional productivity measures focused on economic production may therefore fail to capture some of the benefits generated by these activities.

Owning better technology is not the same as using it efficiently

The findings also point to a second problem. Technological modernisation was not consistently accompanied by improvements in the efficiency with which farms used their inputs.

Polish cereal farms started the period with relatively high technical efficiency – around 94.5% of estimated technological potential – leaving comparatively little room for improvement. Hungarian farms began at around 85%, yet technical efficiency in 2017 remained close to its initial level. This suggests persistent difficulties in translating available technology into the maximum possible output from existing inputs.

This distinction has important implications. Policies that make new machinery or technologies affordable do not automatically guarantee productivity improvements. Management capabilities, knowledge, organisational practices and the way technology is integrated into production can be just as important as the investment itself.

Farm size presents another challenge

Across all four countries, scale efficiency generally deteriorated over the period, suggesting that farms increasingly struggled to operate at an economically optimal size.

The decline was particularly pronounced in the Czech Republic and Hungary, countries characterised by highly uneven farm structures combining many small farms with much larger commercial operations. Poland and Slovenia, where average cereal farms in the sample were substantially smaller, followed somewhat different trajectories.

The study suggests several possible explanations. Direct payments may initially have enabled smaller and medium-sized farms to remain in production, slowing the reallocation of land towards more efficient producers. Structural change from livestock towards crop production may also have affected scale efficiency.

Yet farm structure alone does not determine productivity. Despite very different average farm sizes, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland ultimately display surprisingly similar technological productivity patterns.

Agricultural policy needs to look beyond investment

Twenty years after the 2004 enlargement, the findings offer a broader lesson about economic convergence.

EU accession appears to have created conditions for a rapid technological catch-up among Central European cereal farms. But technological upgrading alone was not enough to generate continuously increasing productivity.

For agricultural policy, this suggests shifting attention from simply supporting investment towards understanding what happens after investments are made. Policies that improve management skills, facilitate knowledge diffusion, allow efficient restructuring and help farms adapt technologies to their particular circumstances may be important complements to investment support.

At the same time, productivity should not be interpreted too narrowly. If agricultural policy increasingly asks farms to produce environmental benefits alongside food, evaluating performance solely through market output risks describing environmentally oriented activity as economic inefficiency.

The central lesson is therefore not that EU agricultural support failed. Rather, accession created a significant opportunity for productivity improvement, and farms initially responded to it. What proved harder was turning that initial technological catch-up into sustained productivity growth.

For future enlargements – and for future reforms of the CAP – that distinction may be as important as the size of the subsidies themselves.

Lukáš Čechura, Štefan Bojnec, Jan Falkowski, Imre Fertő: Has the agricultural productivity increased after European Union enlargements in Central European countries? Evidence from four countries’ cereal production AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS-ZEMEDELSKA EKONOMIKA , 10 p. (2026)

Motherhood timing and the child penalty – by Anikó Bíró

Földi Adrien — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 06:39:44 +0000

Motherhood timing and the child penalty

by Anikó Bíró

Illustration by Vladimir Srajber – pexels.com

The age at which women have their first child has risen substantially over the past decades. This is often seen as beneficial for women’s careers, since delaying motherhood gives women more time to complete their education, gain work experience, and establish themselves professionally. But does having children later actually reduce the career and earnings costs of motherhood? In our new study, “Motherhood timing and the child penalty,” we examine this question using detailed administrative data from Austria.

Our main finding is that delaying motherhood brings economic benefits, but mainly because it postpones the career consequences of having children rather than substantially reducing them.

We find that women who have their first child later tend to have higher earnings after giving birth. A simple comparison suggests that each additional year of delay is associated with around 4.6% higher earnings five years after the first birth. However, this does not mean that delaying motherhood makes the earnings disadvantage associated with motherhood 4.6% smaller. Some of this difference simply reflects the fact that women are older and have had more time to build their careers. After accounting for these factors, the effect of delaying motherhood on the earnings disadvantage is much smaller. This disadvantage averages 67%, while delaying motherhood by one year changes it by only around –0.6 to 0.7 percentage points.

The key distinction is therefore between postponing the career consequences of motherhood and reducing them. Women who delay motherhood can spend more years building their careers before having children. For Austrian women born between 1957 and 1962, delaying the first birth by one year is associated with about 2.4% higher career earnings. Much of this gain—around 1.4%—can be explained by shifting a relatively persistent earnings disadvantage to a later stage of the career. This suggests that even if much of the effect of delaying motherhood comes from postponing a relatively persistent disadvantage (“penalty”), the timing of motherhood remains an important contributor to gender inequality over the course of a career.

The broader message is that timing matters, but timing alone does not eliminate the economic consequences of motherhood. Delaying motherhood can improve women’s lifetime earnings by allowing them to accumulate more experience and earnings before having children. But the career disadvantage associated with motherhood remains remarkably persistent, even when women have children later.

Reference: Bíró, A., Dieterle, S. & Steinhauer, A. Motherhood timing and the child penalty. Journal of Population Economics, Volume 39, article number 44 (2026)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-026-01189-5

Sometimes up, sometimes down: How capital’s seesaw reshaped everyday life at Budapest’s former Ganz-MÁVAG site – by Márton Berki and Mirjam Sági

Földi Adrien — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:09:36 +0000

Sometimes up, sometimes down: How capital’s seesaw
reshaped everyday life at Budapest’s former Ganz-MÁVAG site

by Márton Berki and Mirjam Sági

Photo: Fortepan – Budapest Főváros Levéltára. Levéltári jelzet- HU.BFL.XV.19.c.10 Fortepan 104367.jpg

Investment is usually associated with progress, while disinvestment is understood as decline. Yet places do not move “up” or “down” in the same way for everyone. Our study of Budapest’s former Ganz-MÁVAG manufacturing site shows that capital’s movements are lived through jobs, routines, memories, emotions and changing senses of belonging. The same transformation may bring security to some, loss to others and opportunity to others.

Capital’s seesaw

Our starting point is Neil Smith’s metaphor of the seesaw of uneven development. Capital repeatedly moves between places in search of more profitable opportunities. Investment develops certain locations, but capital may later move elsewhere, leaving behind devalued spaces that can eventually become attractive for renewed investment.

The Hungarian saying egyszer fenn, máskor lenn – “sometimes up, sometimes down” – captures economic and emotional trajectories alike. This double meaning allows us to connect the political economy of uneven development with the ways in which structural change is experienced in everyday life.

From industrial giant to brownfield

Located on the boundary of Budapest’s Districts VIII and X, the Ganz-MÁVAG site was once one of Hungary’s largest industrial complexes. After the merger of Ganz and MÁVAG in 1959, it employed around 20,000 people across a 42-hectare site.

Heavy state investment during the 1950s and 1960s placed the factory firmly “up” on the seesaw. It offered relatively secure employment and became an important centre of working-class life. From the 1970s onwards, however, declining innovation and competitiveness pushed it downward. Ganz-MÁVAG ceased to exist in 1988 – before the socialist system itself collapsed. For many former workers, 1988 was what 1989 was for the country: the moment when a familiar world began to disappear.

During the following two decades, much of the factory became a devalued brownfield. Disinvestment meant more than decaying buildings. It also involved the loss of workplace communities, factory routines and welfare arrangements that had organised everyday life.

Being “up” was never the same for everyone

A central argument of our study is that upward and downward positions are never absolute. State-socialist industrial development provided material security and generated pride and attachment. Yet this supposedly “upward” period was also experienced through political constraint, bureaucratic frustration and weakening community ties.

The experiences of Roma workers make this relational character especially visible. During the 1970s and 1980s, many established non-Roma workers saw the factory as stagnating and losing prestige. For Roma people arriving from economically marginalised regions of Northern Hungary, however, industrial employment could represent upward mobility and greater security. What appeared as decline from one social position could be experienced as improvement from another.

The return of capital – in a different form

Capital eventually returned, but not through the revival of large-scale industrial production. From the 2000s onwards, Chinese traders from the neighbouring Four Tigers market began using empty factory halls for storage and wholesale activities. After that market closed in 2013–2014, commercial activity moved more decisively into the former industrial complex. Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Afghan and other traders gradually transformed it into what is now widely known as Budapest’s Chinatown.

Buildings were reused, trade expanded and new services appeared. Yet the form of reinvestment matters. The new “upward” trajectory was based not on industrial employment and collective welfare infrastructures, but on trade, logistics, retail and small-scale transnational investments. Reinvestment should therefore not automatically be equated with recovery.

The transformation also produced conflicting interpretations. During the 1990s and 2000s, narratives of dereliction, insecurity, disorder and cultural distance dominated. Chinese traders were often represented as a closed community and the market as an unfamiliar “parallel world”. Such narratives drew symbolic and ethnic boundaries between those imagined as belonging to the neighbourhood and those constructed as outsiders.

From the mid-2010s onwards, more neutral and positive framings emerged. Nearby residents increasingly stressed the market’s wide selection and low prices. In one of Budapest’s poorer areas, it became part of an informal local social safety net. Alternative urban walks and gastronomic programmes have also begun presenting the site as a “hidden gem”.

The former factory is thus seen as both rundown and exciting, marginal and increasingly fashionable.

Bringing uneven development into everyday life

We combined document and discourse analysis with conventional interviews, informal conversations, a museum interview and mobile, or “go-along”, interviews. Walking with participants proved especially valuable: buildings and encounters prompted memories and emotions that might have remained hidden in a seated interview.

This approach allowed us to connect Smith’s political-economic theory with Henri Lefebvre’s distinction between abstract space and the space of everyday life. Capital may treat the site as an investable, devalued or revalorised location. For those who work, live or move through it, however, it is simultaneously a landscape of security and insecurity, pride and shame, attachment and estrangement.

The seesaw is therefore not simply an economic model. It is also an emotional, moral and identity-related movement whose effects are classed, ethnicised and spatialised.

What kind of “upward” movement?

The Ganz-MÁVAG case challenges the assumption that renewed investment is inherently beneficial. Capital’s return may increase economic activity and transform an abandoned landscape while also producing exclusion, unfamiliarity and displacement.

The critical question is not simply whether a place moves upwards or downwards. We must also ask: What kind of capital is arriving? What forms of work and everyday life does it create? Who benefits – and who no longer feels at home?

The form of reinvestment matters at least as much as its magnitude. Only by examining its lived consequences can we understand what being “up” or “down” actually means—and for whom.

This post draws on Márton Berki and Mirjam Sági’s article published in the Hungarian Geographical Bulletin, 75(2), 165–179.

The research was carried out within the NKFIH-funded project “Marginalised Space Experience in the Context of Uneven Geographical Development” (Grant No. K 138713).

Unlocking Schoolyards for Greener and Healthier Informal Settlements: Lessons from Nakuru, Kenya – by Sharon Chebet Simotwo, Jenő Zsolt Farkas and György Csomós

Földi Adrien — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:54:04 +0000

Unlocking Schoolyards for Greener and Healthier Informal Settlements:
Lessons from Nakuru, Kenya

Sharon Chebet Simotwo, Jenő Zsolt Farkas and György Csomós

Urban green spaces support physical activity, recreation, social interaction, and healthier urban environments. Yet their benefits are highly unequal. In rapidly growing informal settlements, dense construction, limited resources, and exclusion from formal planning often leave little room for parks and playgrounds.

Could existing schoolyards help address this shortage without requiring cities to acquire new land? A study of two informal settlements in Nakuru, Kenya, explores whether school grounds could be opened to residents outside school hours. Combining GIS analysis, field observations, and surveys, the research demonstrates considerable potential—but also highlights the need for clear rules, adequate security, and shared management.

Nakuru as a Case

The study focuses on Kaptembwa and Rhonda, two neighboring informal settlements with a combined population of more than 77,000. Although they occupy only 13.5% of Nakuru’s total informal-settlement area, they accommodate 43.6% of its informal-settlement population. This concentration has produced an exceptionally dense environment in which land for public amenities is scarce.

Official sources identify nine public open spaces in the settlements. Field observations, however, revealed that six were small, poorly maintained sites with limited vegetation and considerable waste, while two were fenced schoolyards. Only Mazembe Grounds in Rhonda was publicly accessible, but its dusty surface and lack of vegetation and park furniture meant that it offered few of the qualities normally associated with an urban green space.

How scarce are accessible green spaces in Kaptembwa and Rhonda?

Mazembe Grounds, the only open space in Kaptembwa and Rhonda in which informal settlement residents can relax and play sports (source: authors).

The spatial and field analyses revealed several important findings:

Almost no usable green space: Mazembe Grounds provides only 0.073 square meters of open space per resident. If its poor environmental condition is considered, the amount of space that could reasonably be classified as urban green space is effectively zero.
Formal parks are too distant: Nakuru’s better-equipped parks and sports facilities are concentrated in formal parts of the city and cannot be conveniently reached on foot from Kaptembwa and Rhonda.
Cost creates another barrier: Some parks and recreational facilities charge entrance fees, restricting their use by low-income residents.
New parks are difficult to create: The dense urban fabric leaves little vacant land, making conventional park development expensive and potentially disruptive.
Institutional land is underused: Schoolyards remain unavailable during evenings, weekends, and holidays, even though surrounding communities have almost no recreational space.

How much difference could schoolyards make?

The researchers identified ten schools — four public and six private — with potentially suitable schoolyards. Together, they cover 80,676 square meters. Opening all ten outside school hours would increase the total accessible open space, including Mazembe Grounds, to 86,296 square meters, or approximately 1.12 square meters per resident. This would represent a 15.3-fold increase over the current provision.

The four public schools alone account for almost 80% of the total schoolyard area. Opening only these grounds would still raise provision to approximately 0.90 square meters per resident.

Accessibility would also improve. Based on a 400-meter walking distance, the catchment areas of the schoolyards and Mazembe Grounds would cover 60.5% of the two informal settlements, bringing recreational opportunities within reasonable reach of many residents.

What did residents say?

A survey of 134 residents showed broad support for additional open spaces and the shared use of school grounds:

Strong unmet demand: Only 36.6% regularly visited open spaces, but 89.6% said they would use them if more were available nearby.
Support for shared use: Almost three-quarters agreed or strongly agreed with controlled public access to schoolyards outside school hours.
Health and social benefits: Residents expected the initiative to encourage physical activity, improve well-being, strengthen school–community relationships, and provide safer play areas for children.
Willingness to participate: More than 84% said they would contribute to a community initiative responsible for managing and maintaining the spaces.

What did teachers and experts say?

Teachers, public officials, planners, landscape architects, and academics also recognized the proposal’s potential, but stressed that opening the gates would not be enough:

Security is the main concern: All stakeholder groups highlighted the risks of vandalism, theft, property damage, and unauthorized use.
Access must be controlled: Schools would be more willing to participate if clear opening hours, supervision, and security measures were introduced.
Responsibilities require clarification: Formal agreements should specify who maintains the grounds, supervises users, repairs damage, and assumes legal liability.
Additional resources are necessary: Participating schools may need funding for maintenance, lighting, surveillance, equipment, and supervision.
A pilot project is widely supported: Eighteen of the 19 experts favored testing shared public use at selected schools, while all participating teachers and experts expressed interest in further discussions.

Core dilemmas — opening schoolyards without creating new risks

The proposal illustrates a broader planning dilemma. Informal settlements urgently need recreational spaces, yet school grounds serve another essential function. Shared use could improve spatial equity, but poorly managed access might expose schools to additional costs and security risks.

There is also an important difference between an open area and a genuinely green, healthy, and welcoming place. Some schoolyards would require trees, shade, seating, safe surfaces, sanitation, and play equipment before they could function effectively as community spaces.

Nor would opening schoolyards solve the entire problem. Even if all suitable schools participated, nearly 40% of the settlements would remain outside the identified catchment areas. Shared schoolyards should therefore complement —not replace—long-term investment in public parks and green infrastructure.

What can be done?

Several measures could help turn the proposal into a workable initiative:

Start with selected public schools: A limited pilot project should test controlled opening hours before wider implementation.
Establish shared-use agreements: Education authorities, schools, local government, and community representatives should define access, liability, maintenance, and financial responsibilities.
Combine security measures: Lighting, fencing, and controlled entrances should be supported by community patrols, local stewardship, and cooperation with community organizations.
Improve schoolyard quality: Vegetation, shade, seating, sanitation, and durable recreational equipment would help transform basic grounds into attractive public spaces.
Monitor the pilot: Visitor numbers, maintenance costs, security incidents, perceived safety, and effects on school operations should be regularly assessed.
Explore alternative sites: Vacant land and other “opportunity spaces” should also be mapped to avoid relying on a single intervention.

Conclusion — seeing schoolyards as shared urban infrastructure

The Nakuru case shows that severe green space scarcity does not always mean usable land is entirely absent. Potentially valuable spaces may already exist within neighborhoods but remain inaccessible because they belong to institutions with other primary functions.

Opening schoolyards outside school hours could substantially increase recreational opportunities in Kaptembwa and Rhonda. The idea enjoys strong community support and could deliver health, social, and spatial benefits without the expense of acquiring land for new parks. Its success, however, depends on clear agreements, adequate financing, effective security, community participation, and careful monitoring.

The broader lesson for rapidly growing cities is that improving environmental justice may require not only creating new spaces but also rethinking how existing urban spaces are governed and shared.

Sharon Chebet Simotwo, Jenő Zsolt Farkas, György Csomós:
Harnessing the potential of schoolyards to alleviate urban green space scarcity in informal settlements: case study using Nakuru, Kenya
Cities & Health, published online 30 June 2026

https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2026.2686825

Organic certification is not the same as sustainable practice – and gender reveals why that matters – by Imre Fertő

Földi Adrien — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 07:44:32 +0000

Illustration: Grape Things – Pexels

Organic certification is not the same as sustainable practice
– and gender reveals why that matters

Imre Fertő

Organic certification is often treated as a straightforward indicator of environmental commitment. Yet our study of Hungarian wineries shows that producers reporting similar green practices can have different certification outcomes. Female-managed wineries were substantially more likely to be certified than male-managed wineries, while the characteristics observed in our survey explained little of this difference.

The finding suggests that researchers, policymakers and consumers should be cautious about treating certification as a direct measure of how sustainably a business operates.

The hidden step between acting sustainably and being certified

Discussions of sustainability frequently collapse two separate decisions into one. The first is whether a producer adopts environmentally friendly practices. The second is whether those practices are translated into a formally recognised status through documentation, inspection and third-party verification.

These decisions are connected, but not identical. A winery may reduce chemical inputs, reuse production materials, invest in renewable energy or introduce water-saving measures without seeking organic certification. Conversely, certification involves more than environmental action. It requires administrative capacity, record-keeping, compliance routines and a judgement that the benefits of an official label justify its costs.

This distinction is particularly important in wine markets. Some wineries sell through direct relationships, tourism, restaurants or local reputation. In these settings, producers may communicate quality and environmental responsibility without formal certification. Other wineries may depend on distant buyers, retailers or export markets, where an official label provides an easily understood signal.

Certification therefore captures both production practices and the strategic value of formal recognition.

Similar practices, different certification outcomes

We examined data from a 2022 survey of 233 Hungarian wineries, including 41 managed by women. Around 46% of female-managed wineries held organic certification, compared with approximately 29% of male-managed wineries—a difference of about 17 percentage points.

The most striking result was not simply the size of the gap, but what did not explain it. Female- and male-managed wineries reported broadly similar levels of environmental practice adoption. They were also similar in managerial orientation, absorptive capacity, relational governance, education and firm age.

Nor did female-managed wineries appear disadvantaged in land resources. Their median cultivated area was larger than that of male-managed wineries. This matters because the wider agricultural literature often links women’s lower participation in certification schemes to weaker access to land, finance, training and organisational resources. Female winery managers in our sample appear to be a selected group of decision-makers, often operating established or commercially oriented businesses.

To examine the gap, we used a decomposition method that separates the difference associated with observable characteristics from the difference left after accounting for them. In plain terms, we asked: are women-managed wineries more frequently certified because they look different on the variables we measured, or do similar observed profiles still correspond to different certification probabilities?

The measured characteristics explained almost none of the gap. The remaining difference was concentrated in the residual component. The same conclusion held when we changed the statistical model, transformed the land variable, reconstructed the indices and used alternative decomposition methods.

Similar reported sustainability profiles do not automatically translate into similar certification outcomes.

An unexplained gap is not proof of discrimination

Residual differences are tempting to interpret. They are sometimes described as evidence of discrimination, institutional barriers or unequal treatment. Our findings do not support such a conclusion.

The study is cross-sectional, and the female-managed subsample is small. The survey measured the breadth of reported environmental practices rather than their intensity, duration or independently verified effects. Most importantly, we could not observe several factors that may influence certification: advisory support, certification histories, inspection experiences, documentation skills, family-business organisation, buyer requirements, export orientation or expectations about the commercial value of the label.

The residual component therefore tells us where the explanation is not: it is not found in the observable characteristics included in our survey. It does not tell us which unmeasured mechanism produced the difference.

This is a limitation, but also a useful result. Research often advances by showing that an apparently obvious explanation is insufficient. Here, similar reported sustainability profiles do not translate automatically into similar certification outcomes.

Why this matters for sustainability policy

Certification schemes play a prominent role in environmental policy and food markets. They help consumers identify products, allow firms to communicate difficult-to-observe attributes and give policymakers a visible indicator of participation in formal sustainability systems.

But the visibility of certification can create a measurement problem. If certified status is used as a proxy for environmental commitment, uncertified producers who adopt meaningful green practices may be overlooked. Certification should not automatically be interpreted as a complete measure of environmental performance. It confirms compliance with a defined standard, not every dimension of sustainability.

Policy should therefore pay attention to the transition between sustainable practice and formal recognition. Producers may need help not only with adopting greener technologies, but also with understanding standards, maintaining records, preparing for inspections and assessing whether certification fits their market strategy.

This does not imply that every sustainably oriented winery should be certified. For producers relying on trusted local relationships, the private benefits may not outweigh the costs. The objective should instead be to ensure that producers who could benefit are not prevented by avoidable informational or administrative barriers.

Certification is an outcome that needs explaining

Our findings shift the question from whether women are more environmentally oriented to how environmental engagement becomes formally recognised. Female-managed wineries were more frequently certified, but not because they reported more green practices or clearly stronger observable capabilities.

Future studies should follow wineries over time and document the certification process: when producers begin conversion, what advice they receive, how much administration is required, which market channels they use and why they continue, abandon or avoid certification. Linking survey responses to verified environmental and certification data would also help distinguish formal status from environmental performance.

The broader lesson is straightforward. Sustainable action and certified sustainability are not interchangeable. Between them lies a process involving institutions, information, strategy and organisational capacity. Understanding that process is essential if certification is to function as an inclusive policy instrument and a credible market signal.

This post draws on the author’s co-authored article,
Same Practices, Different Outcomes: Gender Gaps in Organic Certification
published in Sustainable Development.

Two decades of earnings inequality in Hungary – by Rita Pető, István Boza and Martin Neubrandt

Földi Adrien — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:11:12 +0000

Illustration by Gergely Meszárcsek @ pexels

A new study by István Boza, Martin Neubrandt, and Rita Pető uses Hungarian administrative microdata harmonized through the Global Repository of Income Dynamics (GRID) framework to examine how much has earnings inequality changed in Hungary since the mid-2000s. Covering 2004 to 2021, the paper finds that aggregate annual earnings inequality moved far less dramatically than one would expect. The big picture is one of broad stability, with only modest increases in top-end (among high-earners) inequality among men and rising lower-tail (among low earners) inequality among young workers. But that stability should not be mistaken for stillness: recessions exposed asymmetric downside risks, and women’s earnings dynamics, especially at prime working ages, remained more volatile, consistent with career interruptions and labor-supply changes around family formation.

During the studied period, Hungary experienced large increases in minimum wages and a clear decline in hourly wage dispersion, suggesting that wage floors compressed differences across low-wage jobs, firms, and occupations. Yet this did not translate into an equally strong decline in monthly or annual earnings dispersion. The reason is that the amount of work also changed: variation in contracted hours and employment intensity became more important, especially among low-wage workers. In other words, raising hourly wages can narrow one dimension of inequality while leaving annual earnings inequality partly intact if workers’ hours, months worked move in the opposite direction.

The linked employer-employee analysis adds another layer to the story. Persistent worker heterogeneity explains roughly half of wage dispersion in both the earlier and later periods, while firm and occupation wage premia decline over time. At the same time, worker-firm sorting remains quantitatively important: high-wage workers are still disproportionately employed by high-premium firms, even as wage floors reduce some gaps between employers.

Reference:
István Boza, Martin Neubrandt, Rita Pető:
Two decades of earnings inequality in Hungary,
Journal of Macroeconomics, Volume 89, September 2026,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2026.103779.

Can Stricter Disability Reviews Backfire? Evidence from Hungary – by Judit Krekó

Földi Adrien — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:14:12 +0000

Can Stricter Disability Reviews Backfire? Evidence from Hungary

by Judit Krekó

Illustration by Kampus Production – pexels.com

Policymakers often assume that stricter disability benefit rules will encourage more recipients to work. But what happens when people fear that working could cost them their benefits?

Our recent study examines a major reform of the Hungarian disability benefit system introduced in 2012. The reform required around 200,000 disability benefit recipients to undergo a new assessment of their health and work capacity. The goal was straightforward: identify people who could work and reduce long-term dependence on benefits.

At first glance, one might expect such a reform to increase employment. Instead, focusing on the oldest cohort of beneficiaries subject to reassessment—those aged 56 when the reform was announced—we found the opposite. Employment in this group started to fall almost immediately after the reform was announced. This happened before any reassessments had actually taken place and before anyone had lost their benefits.

The explanation lies in how people reacted to the reform. Some beneficiaries appeared to conclude that having a job might reduce their chances of keeping their benefits. As a result, some left employment altogether following the announcement. We estimate that a 4.6 percentage-point increase in the perceived risk of losing benefits reduced employment by about 1.8 percentage points during the months between announcement and the start of reassessments.

This reaction is particularly striking because the beneficiaries concerned were generally allowed to work while receiving disability benefits. Most were earning far below the official earnings limits. Nevertheless, many seem to have believed that working could signal to the authorities that they were less incapable and therefore less entitled to support.

Later, a different effect emerged. Some recipients lost their benefits during the reassessment process and gradually returned to work. However, this adjustment was slow. Many spent months or even years without either disability benefits or employment before finding a job. The positive employment effects among those who lost benefits therefore took a long time to materialize.

Overall, over the four-year post-reform period covered by our study, the two effects largely offset each other. The reform reduced benefit receipt, but it did not lead to a sustained increase in employment. The main lesson is that disability reassessments influence behaviour not only through actual benefit cuts but also through expectations and fears about future eligibility. If people fear that working may put their benefits at risk, some may choose not to work even when the formal rules would allow it. Policymakers designing disability benefit systems should therefore pay attention not only to incentives on paper, but also to how those incentives are perceived by the people concerned.

Based on: Bíró, A., Hornok, C., Krekó, J., Prinz, D. and Scharle, Á. (2026), The employment effects of disability benefit reassessment, Journal of Public Economics, Volume 259, July 2026, 105652.

Not all agricultural subsidies are equal: What Slovenian livestock farms reveal about the future of the CAP – by Imre Fertő

Földi Adrien — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:55:44 +0000

Not all agricultural subsidies are equal: What Slovenian
livestock farms reveal about the future of the CAP

by Imre Fertő

Illustration by Helena Lopes / Pexels

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is often judged by how much money it distributes. But new evidence from Slovenian livestock farms suggests the more important question is what kinds of support farms receive — and whether these instruments help them escape persistent inefficiency or simply make it easier to live with it.

Agricultural subsidies are rarely absent from debates about the future of European farming. For some, they are essential to maintaining rural livelihoods, food security and environmental stewardship. For others, they risk dulling incentives to innovate, restructure and become more productive. Both views can be true. The problem is that policy debates too often treat “subsidies” as a single category, when in practice the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is made up of very different instruments with very different effects.

Our study of Slovenian livestock farms shows why this distinction matters. Slovenia is not just a national case study; it is a useful lens through which to view a wider European problem. Many farms in Central and Eastern Europe are small, fragmented, reliant on family labour and heavily dependent on CAP support. These are precisely the conditions under which income stabilisation may be necessary, but also insufficient. When inefficiency is rooted in structural constraints, annual payments can keep farms afloat without necessarily helping them become more efficient.

The study uses micro-level Farm Accountancy Data Network data for 230 conventional Slovenian animal farms between 2014 and 2021, covering 1,807 farm-year observations. The farms include specialist dairy, specialist cattle, sheep and goat, pig and poultry, mixed livestock, and mixed crop-livestock farms. The average farm in the sample cultivates around 13 hectares, keeps about 14 livestock units and generates around €22,500 in annual output.

This structure matters. A dairy farm, a cattle farm and a sheep or goat farm do not simply represent different versions of the same production process. They use land, labour, animals, capital and intermediate inputs in different ways. Ignoring this heterogeneity risks drawing misleading conclusions from an “average farm” that does not really exist. The paper therefore applies a Bayesian dynamic stochastic frontier model that accounts both for technological heterogeneity across farm types and for the persistence of technical efficiency over time.

The central finding is straightforward: the impact of CAP support depends on the type of subsidy. Investment subsidies and other rural development-type payments are associated with higher technical efficiency in both the short and the long run. By contrast, decoupled payments and agri-environmental subsidies are associated with lower technical efficiency at both horizons. Payments for less-favoured areas show a consistently negative relationship with efficiency.

The short-run estimates make the point clearly. A one-unit increase in decoupled subsidies is associated, on average, with a 0.50% reduction in technical efficiency, while agri-environmental subsidies are associated with a 0.28% reduction. Investment subsidies and other subsidies have the opposite association, increasing technical efficiency by 0.43% and 0.39%, respectively. In economic terms, this suggests that more targeted support — especially where it helps farms modernise — may be better aligned with productivity gains than automatic income support.

The long-run results are even more important. The average long-run technical efficiency score is about 0.56, well below the short-run average of nearly 0.71. This suggests that although farms may adjust in the short term, their ability to sustain efficiency gains over time is weaker. In the long run, decoupled and agri-environmental subsidies reduce efficiency by 1.52% and 0.85% on average, while investment and other subsidies raise it by 1.31% and 1.17%.

This does not mean environmental payments are “bad”, nor that income support is unnecessary. It means they should not be expected to do all policy work at once. Agri-environmental payments may be justified by environmental benefits that are not captured by technical efficiency alone. Decoupled payments may stabilise income in a volatile sector. But if the policy objective is also to improve long-term productivity, these instruments need to be combined with measures that address the structural reasons why farms remain inefficient.

This distinction is especially important for less-favoured areas. Around 93% of farms in the sample are located in such areas, where natural or geographical constraints limit production possibilities. The study finds that an additional €100 per livestock unit in LFA support is associated with a 0.62% reduction in short-run efficiency and an 8.18% reduction in long-run efficiency. The policy interpretation should be cautious: these payments are partly compensatory, and the farms receiving them face real constraints. But the finding also points to a risk. Support that protects income without enabling adaptation may lock farms into low-efficiency trajectories.

The broader lesson for CAP reform is that persistence cuts both ways. High persistence is good for already efficient farms because it helps them sustain strong performance. But it is harmful for inefficient farms if it means that low performance is carried from one year to the next. The same subsidy can therefore have different implications depending on the farm’s starting point. This is why the paper argues that the effect of support depends not only on the instrument itself, but also on the level of technical efficiency and on whether the support reinforces or weakens persistence.

For policymakers, this means moving beyond a simple opposition between “more support” and “less support”. The more useful question is whether support is helping farms change. Area payments and eco-schemes may remain important, but they need to be paired with modernisation support, advisory services and incentives for structural adjustment. Without this integration, the CAP may stabilise farm incomes while leaving the underlying productivity problem untouched.

There are limits to what the study can claim. Like much of the stochastic frontier literature, it treats inputs as exogenous. This is reasonable for quasi-fixed inputs such as land, livestock, capital and family labour, but more problematic for flexible material inputs. The authors also note that voluntary schemes, such as investment and agri-environmental subsidies, may involve self-selection: farms that apply for and receive support may differ systematically from those that do not.

The conclusion is therefore not that one subsidy instrument should mechanically replace another. Rather, the study shows that subsidy design matters. A CAP that only compensates farms for difficult conditions may preserve rural livelihoods but fail to generate lasting productivity improvements. A CAP that combines income support with investment, advice and structural adaptation has a better chance of helping farms become more resilient.

The Slovenian case offers a wider warning. In structurally constrained farming systems, public money can either soften the consequences of inefficiency or help overcome them. The future of the CAP depends on making that distinction explicit.

Pisulewski, A., Marzec, J., Bojnec, Š. Fertő, I.
CAP subsidies, technical efficiency, and its persistence: evidence from Slovenian animal farms. Journal of Productivity Analysis 65, 27 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11123-026-00815-4