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(10/2025)473. Valuing theater performances through benefit transfer: Accuracy of transfers over space

Authors: Zawojska Ewa, Jusypenko Bartosz, Wiśniewska Aleksandra
Understanding the value of cultural goods such as performing arts is essential for designing welfare-maximizing cultural policies. However, since these goods often generate public externalities, market data alone cannot capture their full value. Whil…

WP473. Valuing theater performances through benefit transfer: Accuracy of transfers over space

Understanding the value of cultural goods such as performing arts is essential for designing welfare-maximizing cultural policies. However, since these goods often generate public externalities, market data alone cannot capture their full value. While primary non-market valuation studies offer robust insights, they are resource-intensive. Benefit transfer (BT)—using value estimates from existing studies to assess unstudied contexts—offers a cost-effective alternative. This study examines the accuracy of BT in cultural economics, focusing on marginal values of theater performances. Using data from a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted in six Polish provinces, we perform inter-provincial transfers of marginal willingness-to-pay values for four types of theater performances. By comparing transferred values with primary estimates, we assess BT’s validity and reliability. To our knowledge, this is the first BT study in cultural economics using DCE-derived marginal values. Our findings suggest that BT accuracy in culture aligns with results from more established fields, supporting the use of DCE-based estimates in cultural policy evaluation.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2025.10.473
Zawojska Ewa, Jusypenko Bartosz, Wiśniewska Aleksandra
accuracy benefit transfer discrete choice experiment performing arts reliability validity

WP(3/2020)309. What do lab experiments tell us about the real world? The case of lotteries with extreme payoffs

Authors: Kachurka Roman, Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this way, we are able to reliably offer extremely high potential payoffs, something r…

WP309. What do lab experiments tell us about the real world? The case of lotteries with extreme payoffs

In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this way, we are able to reliably offer extremely high potential payoffs, something rarely possible in economic experiments. In a between-subject design, we separately manipulate a number of features that distinguish the situation faced by the customers in the field and by subjects in typical laboratory experiments. We also have the unique opportunity to compare our data to actual sales data provided by the operator of the lottery. Overall, we find the distributions to be highly similar (meaning high external validity of the laboratory experiment). The only manipulation that makes a major difference is that when the probabilities of winning specific amounts are explicitly provided (which is not the case in the field), choices shift towards options with lower payoff variance. We also find that standard laboratory measures of risk posture fail to explain our subjects' behavior in the main task.


Kachurka Roman, Krawczyk Michał, Rachubik Joanna
Decision making under risk External validity Longshot bias Perception of randomness Number preferences in lotteries

WP(26/2018)285. Benefit Transfer and Commodity Measurement Scales: Consequences for Validity and Reliability

Authors: Johnston Robert J., Zawojska Ewa
Non-market goods can be measured on cardinal or relative scales. Consider a marsh of two hundred acres, of which twenty acres would be affected by a policy. The same affected area can be measured in cardinal terms (twenty acres) or as a relative prop…

WP285. Benefit Transfer and Commodity Measurement Scales: Consequences for Validity and Reliability

Non-market goods can be measured on cardinal or relative scales. Consider a marsh of two hundred acres, of which twenty acres would be affected by a policy. The same affected area can be measured in cardinal terms (twenty acres) or as a relative proportion (ten percent of the marsh). This seemingly inconsequential transformation can have significant implications for benefit transfer across sites—a simple observation that remains unacknowledged by the literature. This article provides the first theoretical and empirical evaluation of variable measurement conventions within benefit transfer, deriving conditions under which different types of measurement scales are expected to enhance validity and reliability. Theoretical results are illustrated using an application of discrete choice experiments to coastal flood adaptation in two Connecticut (USA) communities. Empirical findings validate expectations from the theoretical model, with both suggesting that transfers over goods measured in relative units may substantially outperform transfers over goods measured in cardinal units.


DOI: http://doi.org.10.26405/WP/WNE/2018/285/026
Johnston Robert J., Zawojska Ewa
Benefit Transfer; Flood Adaptation; Measurement; Scale; Reliability; Stated Preference; Validity; Willingness to Pay

WP(12/2015)160. The Individual Travel Cost Method with Consumer-Specific Values of Travel Time Savings

Authors: Czajkowski Mikołaj, Giergiczny Marek, Kronenberg Jakub, Englin Jeffrey
The treatment of the opportunity cost of travel time in travel cost models has been an area of research interest for many decades. This analysis develops a methodology to combine the travel distance and travel time data with respondent-specific estim…

WP160. The Individual Travel Cost Method with Consumer-Specific Values of Travel Time Savings

The treatment of the opportunity cost of travel time in travel cost models has been an area of research interest for many decades. This analysis develops a methodology to combine the travel distance and travel time data with respondent-specific estimates of the value of travel time savings. The individual travel time values are elicited with the use of discrete choice stated preference methods. The travel time valuation procedure is integrated into the valuation exercise to create a two equation structural model of site valuation. Since the travel time equation of the structural model incorporates individual preference heterogeneity full structural model provides a travel cost site demand model based upon individualized values of time. The methodology is illustrated in a study of recreational birdwatching, more specifically, visits to a stork village in Poland. We show that the usual practice of basing respondents’ value of travel time savings on their wage rate is largely unfounded.


Czajkowski Mikołaj, Giergiczny Marek, Kronenberg Jakub, Englin Jeffrey
contingent valuation stated preference validity incentive compatibility

WP(8/2015)156. Re-examining empirical evidence on contingent valuation - Importance of incentive compatibility

Authors: Zawojska Ewa, Czajkowski Mikołaj
The contingent valuation (CV) method uses respondents’ stated choices made in hypothetical situations to infer their preferences for environmental public goods. It enables the general public’s preferences to be stated in monetary terms an…

WP156. Re-examining empirical evidence on contingent valuation - Importance of incentive compatibility

The contingent valuation (CV) method uses respondents’ stated choices made in hypothetical situations to infer their preferences for environmental public goods. It enables the general public’s preferences to be stated in monetary terms and hence to estimate the economic value of a change in the quantity or quality of the goods. However, a key question remains regarding CV’s validity: do the value estimates obtained from a CV study reflect respondents’ true preferences and their maximum willingness to pay? Numerous empirical investigations have tested CV’s validity, but overall conclusions are mixed. We critically re-evaluate this evidence considering the issue of incentive compatibility in contingent valuation settings for which the necessary conditions were recently proposed by Carson and Groves (2007). Our analysis shows that once incentive compatibility conditions are considered, the available studies consistently show that the CV method is valid. As a result, we argue that contingent scenarios and elicitation formats must be made incentive compatible in order to observe consumers’ true preferences.


Zawojska Ewa, Czajkowski Mikołaj
contingent valuation stated preference validity incentive compatibility
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