I graduated from the Karl Marx University of Economics, Budapest in 1973, defended my doctoral dissertation (dr. oec, economic history) at the same university in 1975, and became a research fellow at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

During the 1970s and 1980s, I conducted shorter or longer research stays at various universities and research institutes in Belgrade, Birmingham, Cambridge, Cambridge Mass., Glasgow, Helsinki, Ljubljana, London, Moscow, München, Oxford, Paris, Prague, Stockholm, and Zagreb. In 1987, I moved to Vienna and became a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM). Between 1991 and 2018, I continued to work as a permanent fellow there while remaining an external research fellow of the Institute of Economics, Budapest until 2014.

Meanwhile, I gave courses as visiting professor at various universities, including the Budapest Program of the University of California, the Central European University, Budapest, and the Columbia University, New York. In 2009, I was a founder of the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest and – until its closure in 2021 – taught history of economic thought there.

I joined RECET (Research Center for the History of Transformations) at the University of Vienna in 2019. Currently, I am senior member of RECET, permanent fellow emeritus of IWM, and honorary professor of economic history at the Loránd Eötvös University.

Over the years, my research interests have included history of economic thought in Eastern Europe, history of communist economies, political economy of new capitalism in Eastern Europe, economic cultures after communism, and institutional economics.

During the past decades, these were my major research projects:

• Plan and/or Market. A Comparative Study of Reform Economics in Soviet-Type Societies (IWM, Vienna 1987–1992)
• The Communist Legacy in Eastern Europe (IWM, Vienna – Boston University 1991–1992)
• The Social Costs of Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe (IWM, Vienna 1992–2002)
• Populists and Westernizers in Eastern Europe (IWM, Vienna 1994–1998)
• Cultural Globalization in Eastern Europe (IWM, Vienna – Boston University 1998–2002)
• After the Accession. Socio-Economic Cultures of Eastern Europe in the Enlarged Union (ACCESS) (IWM, Vienna 2001–2004)
• Cultural Encounters in the European Economy (DIOSCURI) (IWM, Vienna – CEU, Budapest 2004–2008)
• Understanding Nascent Capitalisms in Eastern Europe (CAPITO) (IWM, Vienna 2010–2012)
• Between Bukharin and Balcerowicz. A Comparative History of Economic Thought under Communism (IWM, Vienna 2014–2017)
• Economic Collectivism: Old and New. Lessons from the Communist and Post-Communist Experience (RECET, Vienna 2019–2023)
• Liberalism – Neoliberalism – Illiberalism: Capitalism after Communism and a New Surge of Collectivist Ideas (RECET, Vienna – George Mason University, 2023–)

In addition to research and teaching, I served as an editor of Transit (Vienna, 1990–2017) and 2000 (Budapest, 1991–2019). Since 2016, I have been the editor of the series Revisiting Communism. Collectivist Economic Thought in Historical Perspective at Rowman and Littlefield (now Bloomsbury).