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 9

WP(32/2026)526. Same Constraints in Changing Times? A Machine-Learning Approach to Childbearing and Fertility Intentions in Poland during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Authors: Kurowska Anna, Grabowska Magdalena, Świtała Maciej, Osiewalska Beata
While studies highlight COVID-19's disruptive impact on fertility, whether pandemic-era childbearing predictors remain informative post-crisis is less clear. Using Polish Familydemic panel data from 2021–2024 (N = 1,925, aged 18–49), …

WP526. Same Constraints in Changing Times? A Machine-Learning Approach to Childbearing and Fertility Intentions in Poland during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

While studies highlight COVID-19's disruptive impact on fertility, whether pandemic-era childbearing predictors remain informative post-crisis is less clear. Using Polish Familydemic panel data from 2021–2024 (N = 1,925, aged 18–49), we apply theory-guided machine learning to evaluate a broad set of individual, employment, partnership, and family characteristics. Because short-term fertility intentions prove most predictive of childbearing, we model both actual births and firm positive intentions using random forest. The pandemic-trained model retained strong post-pandemic predictive performance (AUC-ROC = 0.86), demonstrating that pandemic-era drivers remain informative. Childbearing and intentions shared 16 of their top 20 predictors, highlighting common relational, demographic, and work–family factors. Relationship satisfaction, work–life balance, and domestic work division were particularly prominent, whereas prolonged school and childcare closures lowered predicted probabilities for both outcomes among parents. Ultimately, post-pandemic fertility dynamics reflect persistent constraints embedded in everyday family and working lives.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.32.526
Kurowska Anna, Grabowska Magdalena, Świtała Maciej, Osiewalska Beata
childbearing fertility intentions COVID-19 pandemic machine learning relationship satisfaction childcare closures

WP(15/2025)478. Beyond Usual Suspects: Revisiting Barriers to Childbearing Decisions in a Low Fertility Setting

Authors: Anna Kurowska, Matysiak Anna, Grabowska Magdalena
Fertility rates in developed countries have declined to historically low levels, yet the reasons remain incompletely understood. While economic insecurity, housing affordability, and gender inequality have been central to earlier research, recent att…

WP478. Beyond Usual Suspects: Revisiting Barriers to Childbearing Decisions in a Low Fertility Setting

Fertility rates in developed countries have declined to historically low levels, yet the reasons remain incompletely understood. While economic insecurity, housing affordability, and gender inequality have been central to earlier research, recent attention has shifted to climate change and reproductive rights. This study examines the relative importance of contextual constraints on childbearing intentions among young adults in Poland. Using a factorial survey (N = 1,337), we compare how employment stability, housing affordability, childcare availability, men’s domestic contributions, climate change, and abortion rights shape intentions     to have a first or second child. Results confirm the enduring salience of economic security for fertility intentions across gender and parenthood status. Reproductive autonomy is most influential for childless women and important for mothers and partnered men. Childcare and equitable domestic arrangements support women’s intentions but matter less for men. Climate concerns are less influential. Intentions of childless men appear less responsive overall.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2025.15.478
Anna Kurowska, Matysiak Anna, Grabowska Magdalena
fertility intentions factorial survey experiment economic insecurity reproductive autonomy gender equality childcare availability climate change

WP(8/2024)444. Work from Home and Perceptions of Career Prospects of Employees with Children

Authors: Kurowska Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka
This study explores how various work and family-related contexts moderated the link between work-from-home (WFH) and self-perceived changes to the career prospects among employees with children after over a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue tha…

WP444. Work from Home and Perceptions of Career Prospects of Employees with Children

This study explores how various work and family-related contexts moderated the link between work-from-home (WFH) and self-perceived changes to the career prospects among employees with children after over a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the link between WFH and the perception of changes to one’s career prospects is likely to differ depending on gender, occupation, whether the employee has worked from home before the pandemic, how much time their children spent at home due to pandemic restrictions and the cohabiting status of the parent. We conducted fixed effects multinomial regression models using a unique multi-country dataset, including representative samples of parents with dependent children from Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the US. Employees with children who had prior experience with WFH before the pandemic were more likely to report improved career prospects than those who worked solely in the office. The positive effect of WFH for newcomers to the world of remote work was less unequivocal and varied based on occupation and gender. We also find that the presence of children at home and the cohabitation status substantially moderate the link between WFH and perceived changes to one's career prospects, with different implications based on the employee's gender. We fill the research gap by showing how fluid workers perceptions of career prospects depend on varying professional (prior experience with WFH and occupation) and personal (increased family demands) situations. This study also indicates the need for context-sensitive career management in organisations.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2024.8.444
Kurowska Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka
career prospects family gender work from home remote work

WP(29/2023)436. WP 29(436) Work from home and perceived changes to work-life balance among mothers and fathers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Kurowska Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka, Kaufman Gayle
Better access to work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic offered parents the possibility to accommodate increasing childcare needs, but at the same time it led to an unprecedented scale of workers performing paid and care work  si…

WP436. WP 29(436) Work from home and perceived changes to work-life balance among mothers and fathers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Better access to work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic offered parents the possibility to accommodate increasing childcare needs, but at the same time it led to an unprecedented scale of workers performing paid and care work  simultaneously. The overall effects of WFH on work-life balance (WLB) during the pandemic are thus not clear. In our study we argue that three important moderators alter the positive relationship between WFH on perceived changes to WLB during the pandemic: i) time that children spent at home due to the pandemic, ii) change in parent’s working hours during the pandemic and iii) presence of a partner in the household. We place particular interest in gender differences for these effects. We use unique data from the Familydemic Survey, conducted between June and September 2021, on a representative sample of 9,364 mothers and fathers living with at least one child aged less than 12 in six countries (Canada, Italy, Germany, Poland, Sweden and the US). We find evidence showing that WFH was positively related to perceived change in WLB among mothers and fathers, regardless of partnership status. However, the positive effect was weaker among those mothers whose child(ren) stayed at home due to childcare closures for longer than a month. The positive relationship among mothers disappeared if women increased their working hours during the pandemic. In addition, we found a negative relationship between WFH and WLB among fathers who increased their working hours during the pandemic. We also provide evidence that mothers (compared to fathers), parents whose children were out of childcare for six months or more (compared to other parents) and parents who increased their working hours  (compared to other parents) were more likely to report worsened work-life balance during the pandemic.


Kurowska Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka, Kaufman Gayle
remote work work-life balance childcare working hours

WP(28/2023)435. Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Work From Home on Careers in the Post-Covid Context

Authors: Matysiak Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa
This article explores how Work From Home (WFH) affects workers’ career progression in the post-pandemic context of the United Kingdom, elucidating the mechanisms that drive these outcomes. Using data from the discrete choice experiment fielded …

WP435. Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Work From Home on Careers in the Post-Covid Context

This article explores how Work From Home (WFH) affects workers’ career progression in the post-pandemic context of the United Kingdom, elucidating the mechanisms that drive these outcomes. Using data from the discrete choice experiment fielded between July and December 2022 among 1,000 managers, we show that teleworkers, whether in hybrid or full-time WFH arrangements, face a disadvantageous evaluation by managers compared to their office-based counterparts. The adverse effect of hybrid teleworking is due to the fact that employers consider hybrid workers are less productive than onsite workers. Full-time teleworkers are penalized even if they display the same performance at work as onsite workers. We demonstrate this penalty to be driven by the fact that managers consider full-time teleworkers to be less committed to work than onsite workers. Consistently with past research, we also find that WFH affects workers’ careers differently depending on their gender and parental obligations and that managers’ assumptions about workers’ performance and commitment allow to explain at least some of these differences.


Matysiak Anna, Kasperska Agnieszka, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa
career experiment family gender promotion work from home

WP(16/2023)423. Managerial Preferences towards Employees Working from Home: Post-Pandemic Experimental Evidence

Authors: Kasperska Agnieszka, Matysiak Anna, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa
Work from home (WFH) has been a part of the professional landscape for over two decades, yet it was the COVID-19 pandemic that has substantially increased its prevalence. The impact of WFH on careers is rather ambiguous, and a question remains open a…

WP423. Managerial Preferences towards Employees Working from Home: Post-Pandemic Experimental Evidence

Work from home (WFH) has been a part of the professional landscape for over two decades, yet it was the COVID-19 pandemic that has substantially increased its prevalence. The impact of WFH on careers is rather ambiguous, and a question remains open about how this effect is manifested in the current times considering the recent extensive and widespread use of WFH during the pandemic. In an attempt to answer these questions, this article investigates whether managerial preferences for promotion, salary increase and training allowance depend on employee engagement in WFH. We also explore the heterogeneity of the effects of WFH on careers across different populations by taking into account the employee’s gender, parenthood status, frequency of WFH as well as the prevalence of WFH in the team. An online discrete choice experiment was run on a sample of over 1,000 managers from the United Kingdom. The experiment was conducted between July and December 2022, and thus after the extensive use of this working arrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate that employees who WFH are less likely to be considered for promotion, salary increase and training than on-site workers. The pay and promotion penalties for WFH are particularly true for men (both fathers and non-fathers) and childless women, but not mothers. We also find that employees operating in teams with a higher prevalence of WFH do not experience negative career effects when working from home. The findings underline the importance of individual factors and familiarisation as well as social acceptance of flexible working arrangements in their impact on careers.


Kasperska Agnieszka, Matysiak Anna, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa
career experiment family gender promotion work from home

WP(12/2023)419. Structural Labour Market Change and Gender Inequality in Earnings

Authors: Matysiak Anna, Hardy Wojciech, van der Velde Lucas Augusto
Research from the US argues that women will benefit from a structural labour market change as the importance of social tasks increases and that of manual tasks declines. This article contributes to this discussion in three ways: (a) by extending the …

WP419. Structural Labour Market Change and Gender Inequality in Earnings

Research from the US argues that women will benefit from a structural labour market change as the importance of social tasks increases and that of manual tasks declines. This article contributes to this discussion in three ways: (a) by extending the standard framework of task content of occupations in order to account for diversity of social tasks; (b) by developing measures of occupational task content tailored to the European context; and (c) by testing this argument in 13 European countries. Data are analysed from the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations Database and the European Structure of Earnings Survey. The analysis demonstrates that relative to men the structural labour market change improves earnings potential of women working in low- and middle-skilled occupations but not those in high-skilled occupations. Women are overrepresented in low paid social tasks (e.g. care) and are paid less for analytical tasks than men.


Matysiak Anna, Hardy Wojciech, van der Velde Lucas Augusto
task content of occupations care work wages gender Europe

WP(31/2022)407. Working from Home and Employee Perception of Career Prospects in Europe: the Gender and Family Perspectives

Authors: Kasperska Agnieszka
This article examines the relationship between work from home and perceived career prospects for employees from 29 European countries, considering gender and family perspectives. The indicators of career prospects pertain to advancement prospects, jo…

WP407. Working from Home and Employee Perception of Career Prospects in Europe: the Gender and Family Perspectives

This article examines the relationship between work from home and perceived career prospects for employees from 29 European countries, considering gender and family perspectives. The indicators of career prospects pertain to advancement prospects, job visibility, and rapport with a supervisor and colleagues. Multilevel modelling was applied to the cross-sectional data of the European Working Conditions Survey which was merged with the country-level Family Policies Sub-Index to grasp the potential moderating effect of national contexts. The findings indicate positive relationships between work from home and career prospects for men both fathers and non-fathers, and rather negative relationships for women, especially for mothers. Higher provision of work-family reconciliation measures and the prevalence of work from home are associated with better career prospects reported by both men and women. Varying relationships for different work from home frequencies are observed, with workers who work from home less frequently reporting better career prospects.


Kasperska Agnieszka
career prospects family gender promotion remote work working from home

WP(5/2018)264. Time and money transfers: social networks and kinship in migration

Authors: Nicińska Anna
This study investigates transfers given by different donors to parents in need for help whose children migrated abroad. We develop a formal model of time and money transfers given to the elderly parents by kin and non-kin individuals taking into acco…

WP264. Time and money transfers: social networks and kinship in migration

This study investigates transfers given by different donors to parents in need for help whose children migrated abroad. We develop a formal model of time and money transfers given to the elderly parents by kin and non-kin individuals taking into account the elderly's social network and proximity between transfer's donor and recipient. We find that migrant children specialize in money and non-migrant children in time transfers, provided that the difference in wages and proximity between siblings is substantial, and parental social networks do not compress. The dynamics in the size and composition of parent's social network triggered by child's migration affects the transfers received by parents not only from children, but also from other individuals. The overall effect on total time transfers might be positive even if donors decide to decrease their transfers of time, provided that the set of donors is enlarged.


DOI: http://doi.org.10.26405/WP/WNE/2018/264/005
Nicińska Anna
private transfers care time transfers money transfers kinship family social network proximity migration ageing elderly
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