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.

Please send your paper by e-mail: AI+Q.2OGZJ$Xs5HWp~]uqr4xzbk]#[55y9r{3487fKgP@FV-SmzXsn&SX 

Please send 2 files:

(1) the main text without the title of the article and the authors (DOC/DOCX file) and

(2) the title page including: the title of the paper, the authors and their affiliation (DOC/DOCX file).

Please read the detailed editing requirements before submitting your text. 

Number of Results 4

WP(26/2024)462. Carbon taxes in Europe do not hurt the poor

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Monika Kaczan
This study investigates the distributional impacts of carbon taxes, traditionally examined through simulation studies on the regressivity of hypothetical tax scenarios. However, the dy-namic influence of actually implemented carbon taxes on consumpti…

WP462. Carbon taxes in Europe do not hurt the poor

This study investigates the distributional impacts of carbon taxes, traditionally examined through simulation studies on the regressivity of hypothetical tax scenarios. However, the dy-namic influence of actually implemented carbon taxes on consumption/income poverty and inequality in a cross-country setting has been less scrutinised. This paper assesses the effect of carbon taxes introduced in the past three decades in 15 European countries on consumption shares of the lowest decile groups, poverty rates and inequality indices. The analysis shows that a $40/ton CO2 tax covering 30% of emissions leads to a consumption share increase of up to 4% for the bottom 20% and 40% of the population, a trend that persisted for five years post-implementation, particularly in nations that efficiently redistribute carbon tax revenues. This resulted in a modest reduction in consumption inequality over three years. In contrast, the impact of carbon taxes on income poverty and inequality is not statistically significant. These findings suggest that concerns about poverty and inequality due to carbon taxes can be miti-gated by implementing a moderate tax combined with a strategically efficient revenue redis-tribution mechanism.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2024.26.462
Brzeziński Michał, Monika Kaczan
climate policy carbon tax poverty inequality consumption/income distribution revenue re-cycling

WP(14/2020)320. Why wealth inequality differs between post-socialist countries?

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna
We provide the first attempt to understand how differences in households' socio-demographic and economic characteristics account for disparities in wealth inequality between five post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We use 2013…

WP320. Why wealth inequality differs between post-socialist countries?

We provide the first attempt to understand how differences in households' socio-demographic and economic characteristics account for disparities in wealth inequality between five post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We use 2013/2014 data from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) and the reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder-like decompositions based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions. Our results show that the differences in homeownership rates account for up to 42% of the difference in wealth inequality measured with the Gini index and for as much as 63-109% in case of the P50/P25 percentile ratio. Differences in homeownership rates are related to alternative designs of housing tax policies but could be also driven by other factors. We correct for the problem of the 'missing rich' in household surveys by calibrating the HFCS survey weights to top wealth shares adjusted using wealth data from national rich lists. Empirically, the correction procedure strengthens the importance of homeownership rates in accounting for cross-country wealth inequality differences, which suggests that our results are not sensitive to the significant underestimation of top wealth observations in the HFCS.


Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna
wealth inequality decomposition recentered influence function (RIF) regressions survey weight calibration Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) post-socialist transition Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) housing homeownership missing rich

WP(9/2019)294. Wealth inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: evidence from joined household survey and rich lists’ data

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna, Wroński Marcin
We study how the problem of the 'missing rich', the underrepresentation of the wealthiest in household surveys, affects wealth inequality estimates for the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The survey data from the…

WP294. Wealth inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: evidence from joined household survey and rich lists’ data

We study how the problem of the 'missing rich', the underrepresentation of the wealthiest in household surveys, affects wealth inequality estimates for the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The survey data from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) are joined with the data from the national rich lists for Esto-nia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia. Pareto distribution is fitted to the joined survey and rich lists' data to impute the missing observations for the largest wealth values. We provide the first estimates of the top-corrected wealth inequality for the CEE region in 2013/2014. Despite a short period of wealth accumulation during the post-1989 market economy period, our adjust-ment procedure reveals that wealth inequality in the Baltic countries is comparable to that of Germany (one of the most wealth unequal countries in Europe), while in Poland and Hungary it has reached levels observed in France or Spain. We discuss possible explanations of these find-ings with reference to the speed and range of privatization processes, extent of income inequali-ty, and the role of inheritances and wealth taxes in the region.


Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna, Wroński Marcin
wealth inequality missing rich Pareto distribution rich lists Forbes Household Finance and Consumption Survey transition countries Central and Eastern Europe

WP(17/2012)83. Life Cycle Income and Consumption Patterns in Transition

Authors: Kolasa Aleksandra
There is vast literature examining how households' income and consumption change over the life cycle. These studies, however, are usually restricted to developed economies. The main objective of this paper is to add to this literature by investig…

WP83. Life Cycle Income and Consumption Patterns in Transition

There is vast literature examining how households' income and consumption change over the life cycle. These studies, however, are usually restricted to developed economies. The main objective of this paper is to add to this literature by investigating the life cycle profiles and relative income mobility in a transition economy, facing rapid structural economic and social changes, such as Poland. I show that, in contrast to the US, where income inequality over the life cycle follows a roughly linear trend, the age-variance profile of income in Poland is hump-shaped. This finding might indicate that the income process at a micro level in Poland exhibits less persistence than in the US. The estimates of relative income mobility confirm this conjecture.


Kolasa Aleksandra
consumption income life cycle profiles income inequality relative income mobility transition economy
  • 1