Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/108504 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market No. BWP - 2014/8
Publisher: 
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Budapest
Abstract: 
We study the entry to formal employment and earnings of a large sample of convicts released from Hungarian prisons in 2002-2008. We identify the effect of the prison service on post-release careers by exploiting differences in the timing of incarceration, on the one hand, and estimating fixed effects models, on the other. For convicts with a single prison spell,we find initially negative effect on employment that turns positive after about one year while the impact on wages is permanently negative. A comparison with recidivists, for whom the employment effect is negative and the wage effect is weaker, suggests that these results are driven by a drop in the reservation wages of ‘converted’ criminals rather than the lack of discrimination. This reading is supported by further data showing that the ex-inmates, on average, make increased effort to find legitimate sources of living and support to finding jobs.
Subjects: 
incarceration
unemployment
wage loss
discrimination
JEL: 
K42
J64
J39
ISBN: 
978-615-5447-51-8
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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