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(10/2026)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(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(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
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