You should say "in the more recent year." Because you are only comparing 2 years, you use "more." If you had more than 2 years, you would use "most." Also, you need to have "the" in either sentence. I don't know if that was a mistake in your question or not. In general, you need to have an article or possessive on singular nouns.

If you are comparing two years, the later one would be 'the more recent year'. If you are comparing three or more years, you would say 'the most recent year'.