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 3

WP(12/2026)506. Cultural Divides and Populist Voting: Evidence from a Global Panel

Authors: Brzeziński Michał
Cultural heterogeneity—the within-country dispersion of values measured across hundreds of survey items—predicts populist voting across 60 democracies from 1970 to 2019. I compute fractionalization and polarization indices on Integrated V…

WP506. Cultural Divides and Populist Voting: Evidence from a Global Panel

Cultural heterogeneity—the within-country dispersion of values measured across hundreds of survey items—predicts populist voting across 60 democracies from 1970 to 2019. I compute fractionalization and polarization indices on Integrated Values Survey value items and regress three populism measures on these indices in a dynamic two-way fixed-effects panel with country-level clustering. A one-within-country-standard-deviation increase in cultural polarization is associated with a rise in vote-weighted ideational populism of about 14\ robust to system-GMM and to a sensitivity analysis for selection on unobservables. A V-Party-based GAL–TAN decomposition shows that the mobilization skews toward culturally-authoritarian parties, with no detectable movement in the progressive-libertarian camp. Including behavioral items in the heterogeneity measure eliminates the effect; the values-versus-behaviors boundary is empirically decisive.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.12.506
Brzeziński Michał
populism cultural heterogeneity fractionalization polarization GAL–TAN

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(9/2022)385. When Populists Deliver on Their Promises: The Electoral Effects of a Large Cash Transfer Program in Poland

Authors: Gromadzki Jan, Sałach Katarzyn, Brzeziński Michał
We estimate the effects of the introduction of a large cash transfer program on support for the ruling populist party in Poland. We exploit the variation at the municipal level in the annual cash transfer amount received per capita, and use a differe…

WP385. When Populists Deliver on Their Promises: The Electoral Effects of a Large Cash Transfer Program in Poland

We estimate the effects of the introduction of a large cash transfer program on support for the ruling populist party in Poland. We exploit the variation at the municipal level in the annual cash transfer amount received per capita, and use a difference-in-differences research design to study the electoral effects of the transfer. Our results show that a cash transfer amount of $100 per capita translated into an increase in the vote share for the ruling party of nearly two percentage points. We also find that these effects were largely due to the recruitment of previously non-voting individuals. We conclude that without the cash transfer program, all else being equal, the populist party would not have remained in power.


Gromadzki Jan, Sałach Katarzyn, Brzeziński Michał
Elections Voting Behavior Populism Unconditional Cash Transfer
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