What is it about?
We map why some Hungarian municipalities are richer than others. Using 2019 data, we relate local incomes to education, job seeking, business activity, and distance to major centres. The key message: the same factor can matter a lot in one area and little (or even the opposite) elsewhere so local context matters.
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Why is it important?
Most studies assume income drivers work the same everywhere. We show that in Hungary they don’t: a local model fits much better than a single national equation. This is among the first municipal-level GWR applications for Hungarian per capita income, pinpointing where education, unemployment, business structure, or remoteness are the binding constraints useful for designing place-based policies.
Perspectives
Working with municipality-level data made the spatial patterns feel very tangible: neighbouring places can respond differently to the same “policy lever.” I was especially struck by how the income payoff to tertiary education weakens in parts of Eastern Hungary, while other education levels matter almost everywhere. I hope these maps help practitioners target interventions more precisely.
Tibor Bareith
ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungary
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Are the determinants of per capita incomes spatially homogeneous?, Post-Communist Economies, April 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14631377.2025.2487237.
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