Working Papers

The WNE Working Papers series has been published by the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw since 2008.

The WNE Working Papers series provides a fast, open channel for disseminating research conducted at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. The papers hosted here are working versions (pre-prints) and may evolve as authors refine their analyses, incorporate feedback, or progress through formal peer-review. What you read is the current version released by the authors, timestamped and assigned DOI/ISSN identifiers to ensure precise citation and version tracking. Copyright remains with the authors, who may, at any time, upload a revised file or add a note directing readers to a later, peer-reviewed publication.

The Working Papers series accepts articles by research employees of the Faculty and publications from conferences organised at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Articles should be original research papers which have not been previously published, on the subject of economics.

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Number of Results 7

WP(10/2025)473. Valuing theater performances through benefit transfer: Accuracy of transfers over space

Authors: Zawojska Ewa, Jusypenko Bartosz, Wiśniewska Aleksandra
Understanding the value of cultural goods such as performing arts is essential for designing welfare-maximizing cultural policies. However, since these goods often generate public externalities, market data alone cannot capture their full value. Whil…

WP473. Valuing theater performances through benefit transfer: Accuracy of transfers over space

Understanding the value of cultural goods such as performing arts is essential for designing welfare-maximizing cultural policies. However, since these goods often generate public externalities, market data alone cannot capture their full value. While primary non-market valuation studies offer robust insights, they are resource-intensive. Benefit transfer (BT)—using value estimates from existing studies to assess unstudied contexts—offers a cost-effective alternative. This study examines the accuracy of BT in cultural economics, focusing on marginal values of theater performances. Using data from a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted in six Polish provinces, we perform inter-provincial transfers of marginal willingness-to-pay values for four types of theater performances. By comparing transferred values with primary estimates, we assess BT’s validity and reliability. To our knowledge, this is the first BT study in cultural economics using DCE-derived marginal values. Our findings suggest that BT accuracy in culture aligns with results from more established fields, supporting the use of DCE-based estimates in cultural policy evaluation.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2025.10.473
Zawojska Ewa, Jusypenko Bartosz, Wiśniewska Aleksandra
accuracy benefit transfer discrete choice experiment performing arts reliability validity

WP(19/2023)426. Reliability of international benefit transfer in cultural economics: Non-market valuation of theater in Denmark and Poland

Authors: Wiśniewska Aleksandra, Zawojska Ewa, Baldin Andrea, Bille Trine
Cultural goods provide numerous non-market benefits to society. Estimates of the benefits are needed for benefit-cost analyses, helping to inform cultural policy decisions and aiming at the efficient allocation of public funds. The non-market benefit…

WP426. Reliability of international benefit transfer in cultural economics: Non-market valuation of theater in Denmark and Poland

Cultural goods provide numerous non-market benefits to society. Estimates of the benefits are needed for benefit-cost analyses, helping to inform cultural policy decisions and aiming at the efficient allocation of public funds. The non-market benefits cannot be assessed through market transactions. While original non-market valuation studies require substantial budgets and time, a benefit transfer approach offers an alternative. It enables the application of empirical estimates from existing original studies conducted at one site to approximate the value at another site. This study provides the first international benefit transfer for performing arts and examines the reliability of various benefit transfer approaches. We use empirical data from two separate stated preference valuation surveys conducted in Denmark and in Poland. Our results suggest that the benefit function transfer accounting for differences in purchasing power parity between the countries can generate transfer errors as low as 3-6%, indicating high reliability of the transferred values.


Wiśniewska Aleksandra, Zawojska Ewa, Baldin Andrea, Bille Trine
international benefit transfer performing arts contingent valuation discrete choice experiment transfer errors

WP(26/2018)285. Benefit Transfer and Commodity Measurement Scales: Consequences for Validity and Reliability

Authors: Johnston Robert J., Zawojska Ewa
Non-market goods can be measured on cardinal or relative scales. Consider a marsh of two hundred acres, of which twenty acres would be affected by a policy. The same affected area can be measured in cardinal terms (twenty acres) or as a relative prop…

WP285. Benefit Transfer and Commodity Measurement Scales: Consequences for Validity and Reliability

Non-market goods can be measured on cardinal or relative scales. Consider a marsh of two hundred acres, of which twenty acres would be affected by a policy. The same affected area can be measured in cardinal terms (twenty acres) or as a relative proportion (ten percent of the marsh). This seemingly inconsequential transformation can have significant implications for benefit transfer across sites—a simple observation that remains unacknowledged by the literature. This article provides the first theoretical and empirical evaluation of variable measurement conventions within benefit transfer, deriving conditions under which different types of measurement scales are expected to enhance validity and reliability. Theoretical results are illustrated using an application of discrete choice experiments to coastal flood adaptation in two Connecticut (USA) communities. Empirical findings validate expectations from the theoretical model, with both suggesting that transfers over goods measured in relative units may substantially outperform transfers over goods measured in cardinal units.


DOI: http://doi.org.10.26405/WP/WNE/2018/285/026
Johnston Robert J., Zawojska Ewa
Benefit Transfer; Flood Adaptation; Measurement; Scale; Reliability; Stated Preference; Validity; Willingness to Pay

WP(31/2016)222. Economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by the Wilanów Park: A benefit transfer study

Authors: Zawojska Ewa, Szkop Zbigniew, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Żylicz Tomasz
The Wilanów royal residence – the palace, buildings, monuments and gardens located in the park – is a unique combination of magnificent architecture, historic tradition and nature. They provide multiple benefits to both tourists an…

WP222. Economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by the Wilanów Park: A benefit transfer study

The Wilanów royal residence – the palace, buildings, monuments and gardens located in the park – is a unique combination of magnificent architecture, historic tradition and nature. They provide multiple benefits to both tourists and inhabitants of Warsaw. In this study we aim at estimating the economic value of nature-related benefits of the Wilanów residence, namely the value of ecosystem services provided by the Park. We use a benefit transfer method and find the value of ecosystem services of the Wilanów Park at 500 thousand euro per year. This seems a significant amount, nevertheless it is much lower than the value of “services” provided by the non-biological assets of the residence.


Zawojska Ewa, Szkop Zbigniew, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Żylicz Tomasz
ecosystem services benefit transfer method Wilanów Park

WP(28/2015)176. Performance of different approaches in international benefit transfer: Insights from a nine country experiment

Authors: Ahtiainen Heini, Artell Janne, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Meyerhoff Jürgen
This paper investigates the performance of different approaches in international benefit transfer using data from identical and simultaneous contingent valuation surveys on marine water quality in nine European countries. The environmental good is sh…

WP176. Performance of different approaches in international benefit transfer: Insights from a nine country experiment

This paper investigates the performance of different approaches in international benefit transfer using data from identical and simultaneous contingent valuation surveys on marine water quality in nine European countries. The environmental good is shared by the study countries, but the countries differ substantially in their income levels and geography. We test the performance of three approaches: unit value transfer, unit value transfer with income elasticity adjustment, and function transfer. We find that at least in the case of international benefit transfers (when respondents’ mean incomes vary) unit value transfer with income elasticity adjustment performs the best, both in terms of mean absolute transfer errors and minimum tolerance levels for the equivalence of welfare measures. We argue that this approach should become a standard for quick and easy benefit transfer, and can serve as a baseline for comparisons with more complicated function transfers.


Ahtiainen Heini, Artell Janne, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Meyerhoff Jürgen
benefit transfer contingent valuation international transfer errors water quality

WP(7/2015)155. Is the income elasticity of the willingness to pay for pollution control constant?

Authors: Barbier Edward S., Czajkowski Mikołaj, Hanley Nick
This paper explores both theoretically and empirically whether or not the willingness to pay (WTP) for pollution control varies with income. Our model indicates that the income elasticity of the marginal WTP for pollution reduction is only constant u…

WP155. Is the income elasticity of the willingness to pay for pollution control constant?

This paper explores both theoretically and empirically whether or not the willingness to pay (WTP) for pollution control varies with income. Our model indicates that the income elasticity of the marginal WTP for pollution reduction is only constant under very restrictive conditions, which are not necessary for an environmental Kuznets curve relationship between pollution and income. Our empirical analysis tests the null hypothesis that the elasticity of the WTP for pollution control with respect to income is constant, employing a multi-country contingent valuation study of eutrophication reduction in the Baltic Sea. Our findings reject this hypothesis, and estimate an income elasticity of the WTP for eutrophication control of 0.1 - 0.2 for low-income respondents and 0.6 - 0.7 for high-income respondents. Thus, our empirical results suggest that the elasticity is not constant and always less than one.


Barbier Edward S., Czajkowski Mikołaj, Hanley Nick
Baltic Sea benefit transfer environmental Kuznets curve eutrophication income elasticity of willingness to pay non-market valuation

WP(/2008)9. Study on Benefit Transfer in an International Setting. How to Improve Welfare Estimates in the Case of the Countries' Income Heterogeneity?

Authors: Czajkowski Mikołaj, Ščasný Milan
The paper aims at investigating the validity of benefit transfer in the case of transfers between countries highly heterogeneous in income, and demonstrates relative performance of different benefit transfer methods under these conditions. We examine…

WP9. Study on Benefit Transfer in an International Setting. How to Improve Welfare Estimates in the Case of the Countries' Income Heterogeneity?

The paper aims at investigating the validity of benefit transfer in the case of transfers between countries highly heterogeneous in income, and demonstrates relative performance of different benefit transfer methods under these conditions. We examine how income elasticity of WTP varies in line with the levels of income in order to provide scientifically sound elasticity factor for adjusting transferred welfare estimates. In addition, we have noted that using site-specific measures of income substantially outperforms transfers based on GPD per capita. The results provide conclusions for the future benefit transfers between countries differentiated by income. The accuracy of benefit transfer is compared using equivalence testing following the TOSC test; a new, more informative way of reporting equivalence is proposed and developed, based on computing minimum tolerance level rather than specifying it a priori. The empirical studies are one of the first applications of virtually the same study settings and questionnaires in an environmental quality context, what supplements a few previously existing applications in health effects settings. Lake water quality valuation studies were conducted in two countries in transition - Poland and the Czech Republic - that reflected the earlier studies carried out in Norway and Germany. The use of the same questionnaires and scenarios allowed to control for survey artefacts that could possibly bias the willingness to pay. The welfare estimates collected at four different sites provided a wide base for testing the benefit transfer and comparing the performance of methods to improve the transfer accuracy. Finally, the guidelines for future applications have been offered, as particularly valuable for benefit transfers between countries highly heterogeneous in income.


Czajkowski Mikołaj, Ščasný Milan
benefit transfer income heterogeneity contingent valuation water quality equivalence testing TOSC convolutions economies in transition
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