The labor market and education data collection system of Hungary is extremely rich even by international comparison; however, it is difficult to exploit because the databases are not searchable. They can only be used without lengthy preparations if analysis is limited to the current wave of survey and to producing the most simple aggregated statistics.
Only research relying on longitudinal data covering a long period meets current-day standards. This requires panel or quasi panel databases that are consistent over time, which necessitates the harmonization of variables and coding over time, solving the problem of sectoral, occupational and regional changes in codes, and developing compromise sets of codes. For an in-depth analysis, individual and firm records should be supplemented with information beyond the survey, such as geographical data or price, wage and taxation time series useful for discounting. Information present in surveys but not seen in individual records is also advisable to exploit in order to assign family, household, sectoral or regional indicators to individuals or firms.
The CERS Databank routinely performs these tasks and provides users with ready-to-use databases.
Cleaned and harmonized databases are also available to third-party users (in addition to CERS researchers, their coauthors and students), provided that they have the data sets received from the primary data owners or authorization from these organizations. If requested, we are ready to hand over the cleaned databases to the data owner providing the raw data.