Gender equality, a policy objective of basically universal acceptance, has become a subject of interest in national governments, international organizations, research instructions, and political pressure groups. This paper reports recent investigations regarding gender disparities in the labor market. The main aim of our study is to identify factors affecting gender earning disparities in the European Union member states. Empirical research is provided in two separate areas. The first one focuses on the gender pay gap in the EU based on SES 2006 data. The second one is a detailed analysis of factors influencing wages in Poland, employing LFS 2009 data.

As the global financial crisis hit the world-wide stock markets, investors looked for alternative investments to diversify their portfolios. One of the more attractive alternate investment opportunities has been investment in art. However, in order to consider artworks as investment assets, the performance of the artworks must be evaluated in order to compare it to other financial instruments. Therefore, hedonic art price indexes are constructed for different art markets. The art market in Poland is characterized by a limited scale since it has only been developing since 1989. The aim of our research is evaluation of the hedonic art price indexes for Polish paintings. Hedonic regression models are estimated using data from auctions of paintings that took place in Poland in the years 2007–2010.

Polish government introduced crucial changes concerning conditions of the pension funds functioning in the years 2011–2014. This article focuses on explaining the impact of these political decisions on efficiency of investment fund market in Poland. Therefore, the article aims (1) to find out if changing in functioning of pension funds also affected the efficiency of mutual funds which provide stable growth investment policy (i.e. similar investment strategy as pension funds) and (2) to check which type of investment funds, pension or mutual, were more efficient in the sense of returns and risks under new regulations. The analysis is provided for selected mutual funds using daily, weekly and monthly returns. The whole period of analysis, years 2009–2015, is divided into six sub-periods according to the three events, that essentially changed the functioning of the pension funds. Statistical tests for in pairs comparisons of returns and risks, and ratios for investment efficiency evaluation were applied. Findings show that pension funds performed better than mutual funds which are managed by the same company. More, the changes of the rules for pension funds’ functioning caused an increase of risk and a decrease of efficiency of the considered investment funds’ portfolios.