Manufacturing Development and Regional Socioeconomic Outcomes in the Context of Hungary’s Battery Industry Expansion

This paper examines the association between regional manufacturing development intensity and socioeconomic outcomes in Hungary in the context of the country’s recent battery-industry expansion, using an EU27 NUTS2 benchmark panel over 2013–2022. Using a two-way fixed effects framework, it analyses employment, compensation per employee, and the tertiary employment share, while also testing the conditioning role of regional innovation capacity. The results show limited evidence of broad-based employment expansion, clearer wage upgrading, and no systematic upgrading in the tertiary employment share. Wage gains are stronger in regions with higher human capital and R&D effort, suggesting that innovation capacity strengthens the association between manufacturing development intensity and local wage outcomes. The findings suggest that manufacturing deepening in the context of Hungary’s battery-industry expansion is associated with real but uneven regional socioeconomic outcomes.