Nemzet Fiatal Tehetségeiért Ösztöndíj(NTP-NFTÖ-22-B-0003) Támogató: Miniszterelnökség
In the years following the regime change of 1989-90, Hungary faced numerous economic
and political
challenges. Apart from the dominance of privatisation, the ‘90s can definitely be
described as a decade of
transition. The performance of the Hungarian economy had reached the pre-transition
level by the turn of
the millennium, while the labour market and the structure of economic sectors had
undergone substantial
changes. In the present paper, we investigate how stable the developed sectoral structure
proved to be in
the two decades that followed and what territorial specificities the changes were
characterised by. Our main
question is how further structural changes – besides the sectors’ performance (productivity)
growth –
contributed to the changing economic performance of territorial units in the period
of 2000-2019.
In our study, we divide productivity change into a “between-sector” and a “within-sector”
element. We
regard the analysis as a relevant research question in general as well. However, the
global financial crisis
occurring at the “mid-term” of the studied period (2008) represents a special rupture.
The analysis
framework is provided by the counties (NUTS3 regions), we conduct our analysis in
this context. It can be
established that the primary factor of productivity growth is the increase of performance
within sector
groups and not the change in the economic structure of counties. The impact of structural
changes is smaller
in magnitude and may even have a negative value in several cases, i.e., the economic
structure of counties
has shifted from higher-productivity sectors towards those with lower productivity.
