Labour Productivity in a Central and Eastern European Secondary City – Evidence from Regional and Firm-Level Data

Abstract

Our article examines the changes in the economic position of a Hungarian secondary city, Pécs, and its region in the post-crisis period from a labour productivity perspective. Our aim is to contrast results based on data of the city’s largest local firms from the Orbis Europe enterprise database with the results based on the EuroStat regional database. We assess local trends in a sectoral disaggregation and focus on the period between the two crises. Our results suggest that Pécs and its region face a persistent difficulty in attracting external resources and in retaining and generating endogenous resources.

Keywords

• labour productivity
• regional growth
• firm-level analysis
• central and eastern europe
• lagging regions