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 25

WP(13/2026)507. Did Living Standards Converge? Beyond GDP in Post-Socialist Europe and Russia

Authors: Brzeziński Michał
Three decades after the fall of communism, GDP convergence is widely cited as evidence that the post-socialist transition succeeded. But GDP is a narrow measure of living standards. This paper asks whether convergence toward Western Europe holds up o…

WP507. Did Living Standards Converge? Beyond GDP in Post-Socialist Europe and Russia

Three decades after the fall of communism, GDP convergence is widely cited as evidence that the post-socialist transition succeeded. But GDP is a narrow measure of living standards. This paper asks whether convergence toward Western Europe holds up once health, inequality, and leisure are also taken into account. We construct a comprehensive welfare measure for Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Russia, benchmarked against Germany, covering the 1980s through 2022. In every country, welfare relative to Germany falls well below what GDP alone would suggest. Russia’s welfare stands at roughly half its GDP level, driven by the post-Soviet mortality crisis and extreme inequality—challenging characterisations of Russia as a “normal” middle-income country. Hungary, conventionally grouped with the Visegrad convergence successes, suffers a substantial welfare shortfall driven by decades of poor health outcomes. Poland emerges as the strongest performer in convergence dynamics. Life expectancy is the largest contributor to this gap.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.13.507
Brzeziński Michał
welfare measurement Eastern Europe Russia transition economies living standards life expectancy inequality

WP(10/2026)504. Clashing narratives about economic inequality in the economic and sociological textbooks

Authors: Weychert Ewa, Kopczewski Tomasz
Students of introductory economics courses pointed out that economic inequality the most significant challenge in the 21st century (Bowles & Carlin, 2020). However, there is limited research on how this issue is portrayed in introductory textbook…

WP504. Clashing narratives about economic inequality in the economic and sociological textbooks

Students of introductory economics courses pointed out that economic inequality the most significant challenge in the 21st century (Bowles & Carlin, 2020). However, there is limited research on how this issue is portrayed in introductory textbooks. Our study aims to investigate the presentation of economic inequality in economics textbooks compared to sociological ones. We conduct a mixed-method study to examine differences in how introductory economics and sociology textbooks portray economic inequality. By focusing on the comparison between economic and sociological textbooks, we aim to highlight the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to studying economic inequalities, as advocated by economist Thomas Piketty (Korom, 2019). Comparing textbooks across disciplines is essential for informing curriculum development, encouraging interdisciplinary learning, and enhancing the relevance of education to real-world issues. This comparison provides insights that help integrate diverse perspectives on economic inequality into educational practices in both disciplines. Our analysis includes twelve introductory economics textbooks and three introductory sociological textbooks. We find significant differences: top-selling economics textbooks focus on statistical measurements of inequality and the trade-off between equality and efficiency, while sociological textbooks consider economic inequality from historical, cultural, and philosophical perspectives.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.10.504
Weychert Ewa, Kopczewski Tomasz
income inequality wealth inequality textbook analysis narrative economics qualitative research

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(10/2023)417. What if she earns more? Gender norms, income inequality, and the division of housework

Authors: Magda Iga, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa, Palczyńska Marta
Using data from “Generation and Gender Survey” for Poland, we study the relationship between women’s relative income within the household, as measured by the female share of total household income, and women’s involvement in h…

WP417. What if she earns more? Gender norms, income inequality, and the division of housework

Using data from “Generation and Gender Survey” for Poland, we study the relationship between women’s relative income within the household, as measured by the female share of total household income, and women’s involvement in housework. We find that households in which the woman contributes more to the total household income are more likely to share housework equally. We also find that individual gender norms matter both for women’s involvement in unpaid work at home and for the observed link between the female share of income and inequality between the partners in the division of housework. Women from less traditional households are found to be more likely to share housework equally. However, this negative relationship between the female share of household income and female involvement in housework is not observed among more traditional couples.


Magda Iga, Cukrowska-Torzewska Ewa, Palczyńska Marta
household income income inequality housework gender norms

WP(4/2023)411. Inequality and happiness: the role of income versus wealth inequality

Authors: Sałach-Dróżdż Katarzyna
There are conflicting theories about whether individuals like or dislike inequality, or in other words, whether living in an unequal country increases or decreases their subjective well-being. The empirical literature has also not yet reached a conse…

WP411. Inequality and happiness: the role of income versus wealth inequality

There are conflicting theories about whether individuals like or dislike inequality, or in other words, whether living in an unequal country increases or decreases their subjective well-being. The empirical literature has also not yet reached a consensus. In this paper, we add a new perspective to the inequality-happiness puzzle. First, we study not only income inequality, but also wealth inequality, which has so far been overlooked in the happiness literature. Second, we reach beyond the usually studied Gini coefficient and top income shares, looking also at the other parts of income or wealth distribution. Using data from the integrated World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys for over 50 countries, matched with World Inequality Database data over the years 1981-2020, we find that individuals are happier with increases in the top 10% and top 1% shares of wealth and less happy with increases in the middle 40% share of either wealth or pre-tax income. Increasing the bottom 50% share of after-tax income also makes individuals happier, suggesting that they favor income redistribution. We offer possible explanations for these findings.


Sałach-Dróżdż Katarzyna
income inequality wealth inequality happiness subjective well-being life satisfaction

WP(17/2020)323. Political connections and the super-rich in Poland

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna
We use newly collected original panel data on the super-wealthy individuals in Poland (observed over 2002-2018) to study the impact of the rich’s political connections on their wealth level, mobility among the rich and the risk of dropping off …

WP323. Political connections and the super-rich in Poland

We use newly collected original panel data on the super-wealthy individuals in Poland (observed over 2002-2018) to study the impact of the rich’s political connections on their wealth level, mobility among the rich and the risk of dropping off the rich list. The multimillionaires are classified as politically connected if we find reliable news stories linking their wealth to political contacts or questionable licenses, or if a person was formerly an informant of communist Security Service or member of the communist party, or when the origins of wealth are connected to the privatization process. We find that political connections are not associated with the wealth level of Polish multimillionaires, but that they are linked to the 20-30% lower probability of upward mobility in the ranking of the rich. Moreover, being a former member of the communist party or secret police informant increases the risk of dropping off the Polish rich list by 79%. Taken together, our results show that, contrary to some other post-socialist countries such as Russia or Ukraine, there is little evidence that the Polish economy suffers from crony capitalism.


Brzeziński Michał, Sałach Katarzyna
the super-rich billionaires oligarchs wealth inequality top wealth political connections crony capitalism Poland

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(18/2019)303. Reevaluating distributional consequences of the transition to market economy in Poland: new results from combined household survey and tax return data

Authors: Brzeziński Michał, Myck Michał, Najsztub Mateusz
We use Pareto imputation, survey reweighting, and microsimulation methods applied to combined household survey and tax return data to reevaluate distributional consequences of the post-socialist transition in Poland. Our approach results in the first…

WP303. Reevaluating distributional consequences of the transition to market economy in Poland: new results from combined household survey and tax return data

We use Pareto imputation, survey reweighting, and microsimulation methods applied to combined household survey and tax return data to reevaluate distributional consequences of the post-socialist transition in Poland. Our approach results in the first estimates of top-corrected inequality trends for real equivalized disposable incomes over the years 1994-2015. We find that the top-corrected Gini coefficient grew by 14-26% more compared to the unadjusted survey-based estimates. This implies that over the last three decades Poland has become one of the most unequal European countries among those for which top-corrected inequality estimates exist. The highest-income earners benefited the most during the post-socialist transformation: the annual rate of in-come growth for the top 5% of the population exceeded 3.5%, while the median income grew by about 2.5%.


Brzeziński Michał, Myck Michał, Najsztub Mateusz
income inequality Gini index top income shares tax record survey data Pareto distribution Poland

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(15/2018)274. Top incomes and subjective well-being

Authors: Brzeziński Michał
We use data from the World Wealth & Income Database, the European Values Surveys and World Values Surveys to estimate the relationship between top income shares and subjective well-being in a sample of 35 countries observed between 1980s and 2010…

WP274. Top incomes and subjective well-being

We use data from the World Wealth & Income Database, the European Values Surveys and World Values Surveys to estimate the relationship between top income shares and subjective well-being in a sample of 35 countries observed between 1980s and 2010s (139 surveys and more than 200,000 respondents). Results show that top 1% income shares are positively associated with happiness, but not with life satisfaction. The effect is present in a subsample of Western countries. We discuss possible explanations for the positive association between top income shares and happiness.


DOI: http://doi.org.10.26405/WP/WNE2018/274/015
Brzeziński Michał
top incomes subjective well-being life satisfaction happiness income inequality World Wealth & Income Database
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