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.

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Number of Results 26

WP(36/2026)530. Work-from-Home as a Structural Bridge: How the Spread of Remote Work Shapes Maternal Employment in Europe

Authors: Grabowska Magdalena, Matysiak Anna, Kurowska Anna
The rapid diffusion of work-from-home (WFH) has fundamentally restructured working arrangements in Europe, yet its role as a structural driver of parental employment remains under-researched. Analyzing macro-level panel data across 15 European countr…

WP530. Work-from-Home as a Structural Bridge: How the Spread of Remote Work Shapes Maternal Employment in Europe

The rapid diffusion of work-from-home (WFH) has fundamentally restructured working arrangements in Europe, yet its role as a structural driver of parental employment remains under-researched. Analyzing macro-level panel data across 15 European countries (2006–2024) alongside micro-level maternal transitions, we examine WFH's impact on employment for parents of young children. We find that national WFH prevalence is positively and significantly associated with maternal employment, while no effects are observed for fathers or non-parents. A 10-percentage point increase in national WFH share increases maternal employment rates by 0.86 percentage points the following year and raises a mother’s probability of transitioning from non-employment to work by 4.7 percentage points. However, WFH primarily facilitates part-time employment, acting as a reconciliatory bridge rather than a catalyst for full-time integration. Ultimately, while remote work enhances labor market attachment, without broader structural changes to domestic labor divisions, it risks prioritizing work-family reconciliation over full career equality.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.36.530
Grabowska Magdalena, Matysiak Anna, Kurowska Anna
work-from-home maternal employment labor market transitions work-family reconciliation

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(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(19/2019)304. Evolution of private returns to schooling over the business cycle in a transition economy

Authors: Wincenciak Leszek
The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims to provide the estimates of returns to schooling using consistent methodology and comparable set of data for a relatively long time horizon for a country undergoing economic transition and accessio…

WP304. Evolution of private returns to schooling over the business cycle in a transition economy

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims to provide the estimates of returns to schooling using consistent methodology and comparable set of data for a relatively long time horizon for a country undergoing economic transition and accession process into European Union, 1995-2017. Secondly, using the Mincer (1974) methodology of wage regressions it aims to verify if returns to schooling are pro-cyclical or counter-cyclical. Returns to schooling are linked to the evolution of unemployment rate on a regional level. Estimated earnings functions suggest that returns to schooling were increasing in Poland until 2006 and declining afterwards unveiling the supply side effects domination. The estimates show that an increase in unemployment rate by 1 percent leads to an increase of return to additional year of schooling roughly by 0.008 percentage points.


Wincenciak Leszek
returns to schooling education earnings equation wage curve business cycle transition

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(30/2017)259. Macroeconomic consequences of the demographic and educational transition in Poland

Authors: Kolasa Aleksandra
Soon after the start of the transition to market economy in the early 1990s, Poland has experi- enced both a dramatic decline in the fertility rate and an increase in the share of students among young high-school graduates. These two processes signif…

WP259. Macroeconomic consequences of the demographic and educational transition in Poland

Soon after the start of the transition to market economy in the early 1990s, Poland has experi- enced both a dramatic decline in the fertility rate and an increase in the share of students among young high-school graduates. These two processes significantly changed the age structure of the population and average income characteristics of households. Using a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous households and uninsured income shocks I try to assess the impact of these demographic and educational changes on the Polish economic performance and inequalities. I find that in the long term the positive effects of educational transition on output per capita more than offset the negative impact of lower fertility, but the outcome strongly depends on the adjustments in the structure of labor demand. I also show that the educational transition increases income and consumption inequalities, while the demographic transition decreases inequality in assets.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.26405/WP/WNE/2017/259/030
Kolasa Aleksandra
population aging educational transition inequalities models with heterogeneous agents

WP(21/2016)212. Post-Socialist Constitutions: The De Jure - De Facto Gap, Its Effects and Determinants

Authors: Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
In this paper we aim to contribute to the debate on constitutional rules and their economic effects by extending the focus to the de jure – de facto constitutional gap. Firstly, we provide evidence that the size of this gap matters as non-compl…

WP212. Post-Socialist Constitutions: The De Jure - De Facto Gap, Its Effects and Determinants

In this paper we aim to contribute to the debate on constitutional rules and their economic effects by extending the focus to the de jure – de facto constitutional gap. Firstly, we provide evidence that the size of this gap matters as non-compliance lowers the effectiveness of the constitutional commitment mechanism. Secondly, we identify several explanans of this gap, in particular relating to the democratization process, political conflict, age and comprehensiveness of the constitution. We base the conclusions on an empirical study for the unique setting of the post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia, which all enacted new constitutional frameworks after 1989, and argue that the constitutions in these countries acted primarily as blueprints.


Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
Constitutional Economics constitutional compliance post-socialist transition economic reforms sham constitutions

WP(18/2016)209. Reassessing the Economic Effects of Post-Socialist Constitutions Using the Synthetic Control Method

Authors: Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
In response to the problems of endogeneity and causality in comparative studies with relatively small sample sizes, a new statistical approach has recently been developed, called the synthetic control method. In this paper we apply this method to rea…

WP209. Reassessing the Economic Effects of Post-Socialist Constitutions Using the Synthetic Control Method

In response to the problems of endogeneity and causality in comparative studies with relatively small sample sizes, a new statistical approach has recently been developed, called the synthetic control method. In this paper we apply this method to reassess the effect of constitution-making in post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia on performance of these countries in the field of economic reforms during the post-1989 transition. We first verify the existence of such effects and evaluate their statistical significance. Then we search for the explanation of these effects and their magnitude focusing on the characteristics of these constitutions and the solutions that they envisage (structural provisions, bills of rights and enforcement mechanisms). Thanks to employing this approach we are able to avoid several technical caveats that have arisen in earlier studies and verify the validity of their conclusions. In addition, we obtain country-specific results for each individual post-socialist state, as well as formulate detailed insights regarding the actual mechanisms or channels of influence of the constitutional framework on economic reforms.


Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
Constitutional Economics post-socialist transition economic reforms synthetic control method synthetic counterfactuals

WP(33/2015)181. Economic Effects of Post-Socialist Constitutions Revisited (nearly) 25 Years from the Outset of Transition

Authors: Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
Post-socialist transition taking place since 1989 in countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as later in Central and Southwestern Asia, brought about simultaneous changes of their political and economic systems, requiring the establishment o…

WP181. Economic Effects of Post-Socialist Constitutions Revisited (nearly) 25 Years from the Outset of Transition

Post-socialist transition taking place since 1989 in countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as later in Central and Southwestern Asia, brought about simultaneous changes of their political and economic systems, requiring the establishment of new constitutional frameworks. In this paper we study the effects of post-socialist constitutional change on economic policy decisions of countries involved in this process. As nearly 25 years have passed from the outset of transition, the data allows to conduct an empirical study based on an econometric model confirming the relevance of several constitutional rules in this respect, e.g. regarding the model of government and constitutional judiciary. Based on the results, recommendations are made for countries, where the transition process has been slow and unsuccessful.


Metelska-Szaniawska Katarzyna
Constitutional Economics post-socialist transition economic reforms direct democracy

WP(11/2015)159. Productivity and Inequality Effects of Rapid Labor Reallocation – Insights from a Meta-Analysis of Studies on Transition

Authors: Svejnar Jan, Tyrowicz Joanna, van der Velde Lucas Augusto
From a theoretical perspective the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or inequalities remains unclear. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such link appea…

WP159. Productivity and Inequality Effects of Rapid Labor Reallocation – Insights from a Meta-Analysis of Studies on Transition

From a theoretical perspective the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or inequalities remains unclear. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such link appear at the expense of higher inequalities? We explore the rich evidence from earlier studies on worker flows in the period of massive and rapid labor reallocation, i.e. the economic transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy in Central and Eastern Europe. We apply the tools typical for a meta-analysis to verify the empirical regularities between labor flows and productivity growth as well as inequalities. We collected over 450 estimates of job flows from the literature and use these inputs to estimate the short-run and long-run relationship between job flows, labor productivity and inequalities. Our findings suggest relatively weak and short term links with productivity for job destruction/separations. On the other hand, data reveal a strong pattern for inequalities more churning during reallocation is associated with a permanent level efect towards increased Gini indexes.


Svejnar Jan, Tyrowicz Joanna, van der Velde Lucas Augusto
transition job creation job destruction worker flows unemployment
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