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 6

WP(9/2023)416. Is international free-riding immanent to transboundary spatial conservation?

Authors: Valasiuk Sviataslau
Despite their recent global expansion in nominal terms, many transboundary nature protected areas tend to avoid hands-on cross-border co-operation. One common explanation which is widely seen a major obstacle towards the concerted transboundary conse…

WP416. Is international free-riding immanent to transboundary spatial conservation?

Despite their recent global expansion in nominal terms, many transboundary nature protected areas tend to avoid hands-on cross-border co-operation. One common explanation which is widely seen a major obstacle towards the concerted transboundary conservation is international free riding on the centralised decision-making level. I examine empirically whether international free-riding is embedded in citizens’ stated preferences for extended protection in the case of two transboundary nature protected areas Białowieża Forest and Fulufjället. I scrutinise a sub-set of merged survey samples from the four countries involved, including only the citizens assumingly incentivised to free-ride on unilateral foreign country’s conservation action. I apply attitudinal indicators to form effect-coded variables that measure free-riding, and control for use value, nationality, individual socioeconomic characteristics, and incentive compatibility of the survey design. The results indicate no widespread tendency of international free-riding; the conclusion is maintained with varying modelling approaches or sampling strategy employed.


Valasiuk Sviataslau
transboundary nature protected areas stated preferences public good free-riding binary logit negative binomial regression

WP(11/2022)387. The effect of decentralization of government power on the character of public goods provision

Authors: Marut Olga, Lewkowicz Jacek
What are the institutional drivers of public goods provision? What do we know about the impact of concentration of power on their distribution? The current literature proves the relevance of the allocation of public goods, mostly in the context of ec…

WP387. The effect of decentralization of government power on the character of public goods provision

What are the institutional drivers of public goods provision? What do we know about the impact of concentration of power on their distribution? The current literature proves the relevance of the allocation of public goods, mostly in the context of economic and social progress. A growing number of empirical studies is focused primarily on public policies that may matter in this context. However, we still know relatively little about institutional factors that may affect public goods provision. In this article we apply econometric and machine learning tools to verify the importance of governmental power decentralization for distribution of public goods. The obtained output implies that indeed concentration of power impacts public goods provision and the results are robust across various quantitative methods. Our conclusions may be of practical relevance also for policymakers.


Marut Olga, Lewkowicz Jacek
public goods power decentralization politics institutional economics political economy

WP(9/2021)357. Are Transboundary Nature Protected Areas International Public Goods and Why People Think They Are (Not)? Hybrid Modelling Evidence from the EU Outer Borders

Authors: Valasiuk Sviataslau, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Giergiczny Marek, Żylicz Tomasz, Veisten Knut, Landa Mata Iratxe, Halse Askill Harkjerr, Angelstam Per
Former studies have shown that transboundary nature protected areas are not perceived as pure international public goods by citizens in neighbouring countries that share national parks. In this study, we assess what drives the valuation of nature pro…

WP357. Are Transboundary Nature Protected Areas International Public Goods and Why People Think They Are (Not)? Hybrid Modelling Evidence from the EU Outer Borders

Former studies have shown that transboundary nature protected areas are not perceived as pure international public goods by citizens in neighbouring countries that share national parks. In this study, we assess what drives the valuation of nature protection on the other side of the border in two European transboundary nature areas, the Białowieża Forest and Fulufjället. Applying hybrid choice modelling, we account for people’s attitudes when eliciting their preferences towards transboundary nature protected areas, and examine the impact of attitudes on the degree to which those preferences are consistent with the international public good hypothesis. We found that the intention of visiting the foreign part of the transboundary area, appreciation of transboundary justice and altruism, were the main drivers, whereas suspicious attitude towards the neighbouring country, propensity to free-ride, and manifestations of ‘patriotism’ applied as international public good mitigators to a limited degree only. Value of an extending the protection regime abroad was still positive for Scandinavians, whilst for Polish and Belarusian respondents a policy aiming at extending the protection abroad would lead to loss of human welfare. Facilitating visits of the foreign part by enhancing cross-border access can be expected to shift peoples’ preferences towards transboundary co-operation.


Valasiuk Sviataslau, Czajkowski Mikołaj, Giergiczny Marek, Żylicz Tomasz, Veisten Knut, Landa Mata Iratxe, Halse Askill Harkjerr, Angelstam Per
International public goods national parks forest transboundary nature protected areas public preferences willingness to pay discrete choice experiment hybrid modeling

WP(20/2016)211. Information and Learning in Stated-Preference Studies

Authors: Czajkowski Mikołaj, Hanley Nick, LaRiviere Jacob, Neilson William S., Simpson Katherine
We use experimental variation to influence how people learn a given amount of objective, scientific information about an unfamiliar public good. We then estimate the impact of treatment on valuations for that good in a stated preference survey. Our m…

WP211. Information and Learning in Stated-Preference Studies

We use experimental variation to influence how people learn a given amount of objective, scientific information about an unfamiliar public good. We then estimate the impact of treatment on valuations for that good in a stated preference survey. Our main treatment, a pre-survey multiple choice quiz about objective public good attributes, increased learning rates by over 60%. We find that despite increasing learning and retention rates, treatment had no statistically significant impact on mean nor variance of the distribution of valuations. We show with a very simple theoretical model this result is consistent with a model of confirmatory bias used by agents in stated preference surveys and inconsistent with other models of preference formation.


Czajkowski Mikołaj, Hanley Nick, LaRiviere Jacob, Neilson William S., Simpson Katherine
Information Updating Preferences Public Goods

WP(26/2015)174. "Thou shalt not leech" Are digital pirates conditional cooperators?

Authors: Hardy Wojciech, Krawczyk Michał, Tyrowicz Joanna
In this project we investigate willingness to share and download cultural content by implementing a novel "piracy game" modelled after standard public good games. Subjects' decisions have real consequence, as they are rewarded with indi…

WP174. "Thou shalt not leech" Are digital pirates conditional cooperators?

In this project we investigate willingness to share and download cultural content by implementing a novel "piracy game" modelled after standard public good games. Subjects' decisions have real consequence, as they are rewarded with individual "transfer" on a file-sharing service. We find that willingness to share depends positively on the sharing by others. Interestingly, however, this tendency does not seem to be associated with reciprocity or other-regarding social preferences. We employ several measures of sharing - from self-reporting to experimental - and incorporate to the analysis other factors which may explain the autonomous willingness to share, irrespective of the group effects. We find that conditional cooperation in content sharing is fairly prevalent, but unrelated to personality traits, attitude towards risk, attitude towards the other, marginal valuation, as well as socio-demographic characteristics.


Hardy Wojciech, Krawczyk Michał, Tyrowicz Joanna
digital piracy Big Five public goods laboratory experiment

WP(6/2012)72. Testing game theory without the social preference confound

Authors: Krawczyk Michał, Le Lec Fabrice
We propose an experimental method whose purpose is to induce selfish behavior in games for a broad class of social preferences. It provides a theoretical framework for testing game theoretical predictions by confronting subjects with a commonly known…

WP72. Testing game theory without the social preference confound

We propose an experimental method whose purpose is to induce selfish behavior in games for a broad class of social preferences. It provides a theoretical framework for testing game theoretical predictions by confronting subjects with a commonly known payoff matrix actually representing their preferences. The paper describes the empirical tests of this method based on the comparison of results from several popular experimental games played with and without our methodology. Apart from it being a test of validity of the method, our experiment helps answer the question of how useful social preferences could be in explaining commonly observed deviations from selfish rationality. Results suggest that our method does induce more selfish behaviors: a substantial part of the difference between predictions based on selfishness and observed behaviors seems indeed driven by such preferences. But they also indicate that a considerable share is left untouched, perhaps giving weight to alternative explanations.


Krawczyk Michał, Le Lec Fabrice
social preference experimental game theory ultimatum game public goods game trust game prisoner's dilemma dictator game
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