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 26

WP(24/2026)518. The impact of public transport accessibility on the Polish labour market – an econometric approach

Authors: Pakier Grzegorz, Zabarina Kateryna
This paper uses geographically weighted regression to examine the impact of transport accessibility on the registered unemployment rate. It utilises a transport accessibility index that was previously developed for municipalities in Poland. Analysis …

WP518. The impact of public transport accessibility on the Polish labour market – an econometric approach

This paper uses geographically weighted regression to examine the impact of transport accessibility on the registered unemployment rate. It utilises a transport accessibility index that was previously developed for municipalities in Poland. Analysis of three econometric models revealed that transport accessibility has a significant negative impact on the unemployment rate, which varies across the regions studied. The model using the average transport accessibility of municipalities within a given county showed a stronger relationship with the unemployment rate. This suggests that accessibility at the county level is more important than local accessibility. Furthermore, it was found that the type of municipality had no impact on the strength or direction of the examined relationship. The research confirms that public transport availability significantly influences unemployment levels in Poland, with considerable spatial variation in this relationship. The results emphasise the importance of considering the regional context of transport accessibility when devising anti-unemployment policies.


Pakier Grzegorz, Zabarina Kateryna
transport accessibility unemployment rate geographically weighted regression transport exclusion spatial mismatch

WP(23/2026)517. Using tweet phrases to predict the transition from migration intentions to real-life movements

Authors: Janicka Anna, Amirkhanyan Hayk
Understanding the transition from migration intentions to actual movements remains a challenge in demographic research, often hampered by a persistent intention-behavior gap. This research examines how linguistic variations in individuals' stated…

WP517. Using tweet phrases to predict the transition from migration intentions to real-life movements

Understanding the transition from migration intentions to actual movements remains a challenge in demographic research, often hampered by a persistent intention-behavior gap. This research examines how linguistic variations in individuals' stated migration intentions, particularly on social media, help predict actual movements. We hypothesize that the specific phrasing of the intention reflects the strength and proximity to realization. To verify this claim, we compiled a unique dataset based on migration-related tweets from Polish users posted between 2006 and 2021, identifying potential migrants via Polish keywords that indicated some form of migration intent. The collected statements were manually categorized for linguistic nuances and contextual factors. Actual migration was subsequently tracked by detecting significant country changes (minimum 30 or 180 days) in users' geotagged tweet histories, and logistic regression models were applied to assess the predictive power of different formulations. Our findings demonstrate that the linguistic phrasing of migration intentions correlates significantly with their realization: users employing “planning” keywords were most likely to migrate, while those expressing mere “preferences” were the least likely. Additionally, intentions communicated through multiple tweets, as well as those linked to concrete goals, such as education, positively predicted actual movement. Conversely, tweets with negative contexts, hypothetical conditions, or perceived obstacles were related to a reduced actual migration probability. This study empirically confirms that subtle linguistic variations and contextual elements within spontaneous social media expressions may be treated as indicators of migration intention strength and its likelihood of translating into actual behavior. Our results highlight the importance of differentiating intention forms to enhance migration predictions and refine future survey designs.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.23.517
Janicka Anna, Amirkhanyan Hayk
migration intentions migration behavior migration decision-making intention-behavior gap social media analysis Twitter data geolocated data linguistic cues migration prediction human mobility Poland

WP(22/2026)516. When Risk Information Changes the Trip: Evidence from a Randomized Panel Combining Discrete Choice and Travel Cost Methods

Authors: Czajkowski Mikołaj, Zawadzki Wojciech, Skrzypek Katarzyna, Budziński Wiktor, Ščasnŷ Milan
Coastal bathing delivers large welfare benefits but exposes recreationists to low-probability, high-salience microbial risks that are likely to become more frequent under climate change. Because these risks are largely invisible, behaviour and welfar…

WP516. When Risk Information Changes the Trip: Evidence from a Randomized Panel Combining Discrete Choice and Travel Cost Methods

Coastal bathing delivers large welfare benefits but exposes recreationists to low-probability, high-salience microbial risks that are likely to become more frequent under climate change. Because these risks are largely invisible, behaviour and welfare depend on beliefs and the effectiveness of risk communication. We provide causal evidence on how pathogen-risk information affects preferences and recreation demand using a three-wave panel survey of users of the Gulf of Gdańsk and the Vistula Lagoon (Poland). A stratified national sample identified 3,312 active coastal users in Wave 1 (spring 2024); 2,588 respondents returned in Wave 2 (summer 2024), where they were randomly assigned to receive either minimal information or increasingly detailed pathogen-risk scripts, and then completed a repeated beach-site discrete choice experiment. Approximately one year later (spring 2025), 1,507 users completed a policy-referendum discrete choice experiment on programs combining water-quality improvements, monitoring frequency, and household costs, alongside a repeated travel-cost module capturing multi-day trips and beach outings. Information treatments significantly increased objective and self-assessed knowledge and selectively raised willingness to travel/pay for risk-relevant attributes – especially frequent water-quality monitoring and water-quality improvements – while leaving unrelated attributes largely unchanged. Travel-cost models indicate that information affects trip-taking behaviour, yet the marginal travel-cost sensitivity remains stable, consistent with a demand shift rather than a change in the “price” slope. The results imply that welfare estimates are information-dependent and that credible risk communication can function as a scalable, low-cost complement to traditional coastal health-risk management.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.22.516
Czajkowski Mikołaj, Zawadzki Wojciech, Skrzypek Katarzyna, Budziński Wiktor, Ščasnŷ Milan
Bathing water quality Pathogens Microbial contamination Risk communication Information treatments Discrete choice experiment (DCE) Travel cost method (TCM) Recreation demand Welfare measurement Consumer surplus Climate adaptation Coastal health risks Baltic Sea Poland

WP(21/2026)515. Beyond Weeks Closed: Reassessing Pandemic Educational Disruption with TIMSS 2003–2023

Authors: Binkiewicz Marzena, Pokropek Artur
Using six TIMSS cycles (2003–2023), UNESCO school-closure data, and World Bank GDP indicators, we estimate deviation-from-trend and continuous-treatment Difference-in-Differences models for mathematics achievement, liking learning mathematics, …

WP515. Beyond Weeks Closed: Reassessing Pandemic Educational Disruption with TIMSS 2003–2023

Using six TIMSS cycles (2003–2023), UNESCO school-closure data, and World Bank GDP indicators, we estimate deviation-from-trend and continuous-treatment Difference-in-Differences models for mathematics achievement, liking learning mathematics, and confidence in mathematics. Mathematics achievement declined substantially relative to pre-pandemic trends, but closure duration did not consistently explain cross-national variation in achievement losses. Unexpectedly, longer closures were associated with slightly higher liking learning mathematics, particularly among Grade 4 students in higher-GDP countries, while confidence in mathematics remained largely unchanged. These findings suggest a decoupling of cognitive and affective outcomes during the pandemic and indicate that school-closure duration alone is an insufficient measure of educational harm. Comparative evaluations of pandemic education policies should therefore incorporate indicators of instructional continuity, remote-learning quality, and recovery efforts alongside formal school-closure measures.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.21.515
Binkiewicz Marzena, Pokropek Artur
Mathematics achievement non-cognitive factors distance learning school closures TIMSS math anxiety self-efficacy

WP(20/2026)514. Hedging Auction Volatility with Gap Call Options

Authors: Mbara Gilbert
We investigate the feasibility of hedging commodity price risk using gap call options within an auction-based market devoid of traditional derivatives. Using a novel, high-frequency dataset from the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE), we model spot price …

WP514. Hedging Auction Volatility with Gap Call Options

We investigate the feasibility of hedging commodity price risk using gap call options within an auction-based market devoid of traditional derivatives. Using a novel, high-frequency dataset from the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE), we model spot price dynamics by deriving a Geometric Brownian Motion process from the independent private values paradigm. The estimated model captures the unique microstructure of the NCE, where discrete weekly auctions generate prices characterized by extreme volatility (146.5% annualized). We utilize Monte Carlo simulation to price and evaluate the performance of gap call options for buyers seeking protection against catastrophic price spikes. Our results demonstrate that gap options – characterized by a trigger price higher than the strike – provide superior risk-adjusted returns compared to standard European calls. Our study offers a practical framework for developing tailored risk management instruments in emerging commodity exchanges, and provides empirical evidence for the viability of gap options as a cost-effective hedging tool in high-volatility, institutionally constrained markets.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.20.514
Mbara Gilbert
risk management hedging commodity price risk gap options Nairobi Coffee Exchange geometric Brownian motion Monte Carlo simulation

WP(19/2026)513. Price Discovery in Segmented Markets: Evidence from the Nairobi Coffee Exchange

Authors: Mbara Gilbert
We investigate the dynamics of price discovery between physical spot and financial futures markets for green coffee, a commodity uniquely characterized by the geographical and informational separation of its producers from global financial centers. U…

WP513. Price Discovery in Segmented Markets: Evidence from the Nairobi Coffee Exchange

We investigate the dynamics of price discovery between physical spot and financial futures markets for green coffee, a commodity uniquely characterized by the geographical and informational separation of its producers from global financial centers. Using dis-aggregated weekly prices from the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) auction and corresponding International Coffee Exchange (ICE) futures, we estimate a vector error correction model to quantify the transmission of information. Our findings reveal that price discovery predominantly occurs in the physical spot market, which accounts for approximately 83% and 88% of the information and component shares, respectively. These results challenge the conventional view that futures markets are the primary locus of price formation for homogeneous commodities and highlight the critical role of local supply-demand fundamentals in a major producing region. The analysis further uncovers heterogeneity in price discovery contributions across different coffee grades, providing novel insights into the micro-structure of agricultural commodity markets.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.19.513
Mbara Gilbert
price discovery information shares cointegration coffee futures Nairobi Coffee Exchange commodity markets

WP(18/2026)512. Painting Price: A Machine Learning Approach to Art Valuation. Proof of Concept and Market Structure Diagnosis

Authors: Okhrimenko Kostiantyn
This paper investigates the feasibility of predicting art prices using machine learning methods applied to a dataset of 20,905 paintings and drawings scraped from the Artsper online marketplace. We test tree-based ensemble models (Decision Tree, Rand…

WP512. Painting Price: A Machine Learning Approach to Art Valuation. Proof of Concept and Market Structure Diagnosis

This paper investigates the feasibility of predicting art prices using machine learning methods applied to a dataset of 20,905 paintings and drawings scraped from the Artsper online marketplace. We test tree-based ensemble models (Decision Tree, Random Forest, XGboost) and deep learning architectures (MLP, CNN, Fusion) on both tabular metadata and hand-crafted image features. Results consistently show poor predictive performance across all model types and feature sets. We argue that this outcome is not a methodological failure but a substantive finding: it constitutes a diagnosis of the market structure of contemporary art. Drawing on hedonic pricing theory (Rosen 1974), the sociology of cultural fields (Bourdieu 1993), and the economics of valuation (Velthuis 2005; Beckert and Rössel 2013), we propose a three-layer model of art price determinants: physical attributes (observable and partially captured by models), visual-aesthetic features (observable but poorly quantifiable), and narrative-reputational capital (largely unobservable in cross-sectional platform data).


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.18.512
Okhrimenko Kostiantyn
art market machine learning hedonic pricing art valuation cultural economics XGboost CNN

WP(17/2026)511. When Politics Enters the Family: Electoral Outcomes and Fertility in the United Kingdom

Authors: Baszczak Łukasz, Weychert Ewa
This paper examines the relationship between political outcomes and fertility behavior by linking electoral results with individual-level fertility outcomes in the United Kingdom. Drawing and the narrative decision-making framework (Vignoli et al., 2…

WP511. When Politics Enters the Family: Electoral Outcomes and Fertility in the United Kingdom

This paper examines the relationship between political outcomes and fertility behavior by linking electoral results with individual-level fertility outcomes in the United Kingdom. Drawing and the narrative decision-making framework (Vignoli et al., 2020; Johnson, Bilovich, & Tuckett, 2023) and the role of political polarization in fertility outcomes (Dahl et al. 2022) it considers how alignment between one’s political preferences and the actual party in power shapes fertility behaviour. Specifically, the study tests whether this alignment increases the probability of a first birth using longitudinal data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) over the period 1991–2020. We derive the month of conception from respondents’ birth histories and combine this information with measures of their political preferences (extrapolated to account for every month in the studied period). The results of a complementary log-log model indicate that the probability of conception is higher when an individual’s preferred party is in government.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.17.511
Baszczak Łukasz, Weychert Ewa
fertility uncertainty narrative decision theory voting behavior United Kingdom

WP(16/2026)510. Two Blind Walls: A Transferable Pedagogical Design for Art-Market Literacy Across Art and Economics Education

Authors: Kopczewski Tomasz, Laskowska-Lisicka Justyna, Lisicki Jan, Okhrimenko Kostiantyn, Potocki Tomasz
This article presents an ongoing pedagogical project at the intersection of economics and art education. It starts from a double blind wall: economics rarely uses the art market as a eaching laboratory, while art education often protects aesthetic ju…

WP510. Two Blind Walls: A Transferable Pedagogical Design for Art-Market Literacy Across Art and Economics Education

This article presents an ongoing pedagogical project at the intersection of economics and art education. It starts from a double blind wall: economics rarely uses the art market as a eaching laboratory, while art education often protects aesthetic judgement from market reductionism. We propose a transferable protocol combining diagnostic questions, valuation tasks, anchoring and signalling treatments, public-art perception probes, and dashboard feedback. Its first implementation uses Wojciech Fangor in Warsaw. The aim is not representative measurement, but a replicable design through which students observe how attention, information, narrative, and market signals shape the encounter with art.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.16.510
Kopczewski Tomasz, Laskowska-Lisicka Justyna, Lisicki Jan, Okhrimenko Kostiantyn, Potocki Tomasz
art valuation economics education art education anchoring signalling asymmetric information pedagogical narrative laboratory Know Thyself Wojciech Fangor replication

WP(15/2026)509. Capturing zero-price effects in stated choice surveys: implications for willingness-to-pay and welfare

Authors: Tjiong Jeff, Dekker Thijs, Hess Stephane, Giergiczny Marek, Ojeda-Cabral Manuel, Czajkowski Mikołaj
Stated choice surveys commonly used in public policy appraisal – such as in transport or environmental economics – often contrast a ‘free’ status quo alternative against a range of (policy) interventions which can be implement…

WP509. Capturing zero-price effects in stated choice surveys: implications for willingness-to-pay and welfare

Stated choice surveys commonly used in public policy appraisal – such as in transport or environmental economics – often contrast a ‘free’ status quo alternative against a range of (policy) interventions which can be implemented at a cost. Limited attention has, however, been paid to the fact that the ‘free’ nature of the status quo (SQ) alternative may make the SQ alternative overly attractive due to the zero-price (ZP) effect. The ZP effect is a well-established notion in behavioural economics explaining the phenomenon that individuals tend to over-react to free alternatives. We present an experimental design setup allowing the separation of the ZP effect from the SQ effect together with the identification of non-linear sensitivities to costs. Choices made by students between different mobile broadband packages are used for illustrational purposes. Our analysis shows that the ZP effect is significant and the observed preference to remain in the SQ is largely due to the ZP effect. In practice, this may lead to biased welfare estimates for public policy packages if the ZP effect is not explicitly accounted for. Moreover, we also show that misspecification of the functional form for cost can lead to significant bias in WTP estimates and the ZP and SQ effects.


DOI: https://doi.org/10.33138/2957-0506.2026.15.509
Tjiong Jeff, Dekker Thijs, Hess Stephane, Giergiczny Marek, Ojeda-Cabral Manuel, Czajkowski Mikołaj
zero-price effect stated choice experiments status quo bias willingness-to-pay welfare analysis discrete choice modelling non-linear cost sensitivity Box-Cox transformation mobile broadband
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