Laszlo Mihalyffy

Between 1964 and 1966, he worked as a mathematician at the Institute of Industrial Economics and Plant Management (IGÜSZI) of the Ministry of Heavy Industry (NIM), and then between 1967 and 1969, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Descriptive Geometry, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Budapest University of Technology (BME).

His workplace between 1970 and 1984 was a group of researchers working on macroeconomic modeling, which at that time belonged to various institutions (Infelor, Számki, etc.) as a department or main department, with sometimes changing names; the last name was the MTA Econometric Laboratory. Its leader was the renowned economist György Szakolczai, whose person was not affected by the changes. He also supervised the work of Mihályffy, whose task as a senior scientific associate was to examine the designed models (especially the dynamic models) from the point of view of whether they, as systems of mathematical equations, had solutions.

From 1984 to 2005, he worked at the Methodology Department of the Central Statistical Office (KSH) – previously at its predecessors – as a senior lecturer, head of department and then as a senior statistical advisor. His task was to study and apply sampling methods related to population data collection. In this field, the KSH was at the forefront of Europe before the change of regime.
His activities and achievements in the following headings: small-area estimates; combined estimates; introduction of calibration in population surveys; estimation of sampling error in case of samples with complex structure; the labor force survey (LFS); plans and implementation of the 2005 census sample covering only a part of the population (microcensus) based on the 2001 census. In addition, he wrote and had publications published in the Statistical Review – even after his retirement.

He was a member of the Hungarian Statistical Society, the Economic Modelling Society (GMT) and, until 2016, the International Statistical Institute.

His awards include: Fényes Elek Memorial Medal (KSH, 2005), Károly Keleti Memorial Medal (Hungarian Statistical Society, 2006); Béla Krekó Award (GMT, 2009).