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 5

WP(28/2026)522. Intra-Household Relative Income and Happiness: The Role of Unpaid Work Division During COVID and Afterwards

Authors: Grabowska Magdalena
Rising female employment and earnings have transformed partners’ economic positions, while gender divisions in unpaid labor persist. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the organization of paid and unpaid work, opening a window to reassess these tw…

WP522. Intra-Household Relative Income and Happiness: The Role of Unpaid Work Division During COVID and Afterwards

Rising female employment and earnings have transformed partners’ economic positions, while gender divisions in unpaid labor persist. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the organization of paid and unpaid work, opening a window to reassess these two dimensions within couples. Using longitudinal panel data from Poland (2021–2024), this paper examines how relative income and the division of unpaid labor relate to both life satisfaction and partner satisfaction among partnered adults. Random-effects models reveal distinct gendered patterns. For men, these dynamics are associated primarily with global life satisfaction: men report higher life satisfaction when they out-earn their partners, but substantially lower life satisfaction when they are out-earned and primarily responsible for domestic work. For women, effects concentrate in partner satisfaction: women who out-earn their partners report lower partner satisfaction when they also perform most domestic labor. These patterns hold for both housework and childcare and are observed primarily in the post-pandemic period.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.28.522
Grabowska Magdalena
relative income unpaid labor division subjective well-being intra-couple income distribution Poland

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(2/2023)409. Prudent populists? The short-term macroeconomic impact of populist policies in Poland

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Sałach-Dróżdż Katarzyna
Recent research shows that populist governments in general depress countries’ economic growth and fail to improve income distribution. We study the short-term macroeconomic consequences of populist policies implemented in Poland since 2015. Usi…

WP409. Prudent populists? The short-term macroeconomic impact of populist policies in Poland

Recent research shows that populist governments in general depress countries’ economic growth and fail to improve income distribution. We study the short-term macroeconomic consequences of populist policies implemented in Poland since 2015. Using the augmented synthetic control method, we find that the populists boosted the GDP per capita by almost 8% between 2016 and 2019. We do not find any effect of populism on inflation and estimate only small labor market impacts. The populists improved tax revenue collection and reduced public debt. A generous child benefit program and other redistributive policies introduced by the populists significantly reduced overall poverty and almost eradicated absolute child poverty. Our results imply that anti-establishment populists may be macroeconomically prudent, at least in the short run.


Brzeziński Michał, Sałach-Dróżdż Katarzyna
populism economic growth public finance income distribution Poland

WP(31/2013)116. Parametric modelling of income distribution in Central and Eastern Europe

Authors: Brzeziński Michał
This paper models income distribution in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) in 1990s and 2000s using parametric models of income distribution. In particular, we use the gene…

WP116. Parametric modelling of income distribution in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper models income distribution in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) in 1990s and 2000s using parametric models of income distribution. In particular, we use the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2), which has been found in the previous literature to give an excellent fit to income distributions across time and countries. We have found that for Poland and Hungary, the GB2 model fits the data better than its nested alternatives (the Dagum and Singh-Maddala distributions). However, for Czech Republic and Slovak Republic the Dagum model is as good as the GB2 and may be preferred due to its simpler functional form. The paper also found that the tails of parametric income distribution in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic have become fatter in the course of transformation to market economy, which provides evidence for growing income bi-polarization in these societies. Statistical inference on changes in income inequality based on parametric Lorenz dominance suggests that, independently of inequality index used, income inequality in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic has increased during transformation. For Hungary, there is no Lorenz dominance and conclusions about the direction of changes in income inequality depend on the cardinal inequality measure used.


Brzeziński Michał
generalized beta of the second kind (GB2) distribution parametric modelling income distribution Lorenz dominance Central and Eastern Europe

WP(1/2013)86. Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for top income shares

Authors: Brzeziński Michał
We analyse statistical inference for top income shares in finite samples. The asymptotic inference performs poorly even in large samples. The standard bootstrap tests give some improvement, but can be unreliable. Semi-parametric bootstrap approach is…

WP86. Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for top income shares

We analyse statistical inference for top income shares in finite samples. The asymptotic inference performs poorly even in large samples. The standard bootstrap tests give some improvement, but can be unreliable. Semi-parametric bootstrap approach is accurate in moderate and larger samples.


Brzeziński Michał
top income shares income distribution inference bootstrap semi-parametric bootstrap
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