Karol Jan Borowiecki

Evaluation systems often seek to reduce bias, prevent manipulation, preserve relevant information, maintain comparability, and treat candidates equally, but these fairness goals can conflict. This paper develops a framework for understanding such trade-offs in expert evaluation—including peer review, grant panels, academic hiring, and artistic competitions—where quality is multidimensional and legitimate disagreement among evaluators is possible. We treat the choice among evaluation procedures as a problem of constitutional design: rules must be selected before the specific candidates, evaluators, and circumstances that will test them are known. Classical music competitions are our primary analytical setting because their rules, scores, and controversies make these trade-offs unusually visible, but the framework applies to other settings in which expert judgments are aggregated under incomplete information. The framework highlights two core tensions: information control and outlier rules. First, when information is both quality-relevant and identity-revealing, procedures that suppress bias-relevant cues may also remove information with genuine evaluative content. Second, because sincere minority judgment and strategic manipulation can generate similar observed score patterns, score-based exclusion rules may reduce manipulation while limiting legitimate dissent. Two further trade-offs concerning transparency and standardization are developed as illustrations. The analysis shows that no procedure can eliminate all vulnerabilities at once. Beyond this design implication, the framework also helps explain why evaluation rules differ across stages and settings, and why well-intentioned reforms may create new vulnerabilities.

Evaluation systems often seek to reduce bias, prevent manipulation, preserve relevant information, maintain comparability, and treat candidates equally, but these fairness goals can conflict. This paper develops a framework for understanding such trade-offs in expert evaluation---including peer review, grant panels, academic hiring, and artistic competitions---where quality is multidimensional and legitimate disagreement among evaluators is possible. We treat the choice among evaluation procedures as a problem of constitutional design: rules must be selected before the specific candidates, evaluators, and circumstances that will test them are known. Classical music competitions are our primary analytical setting because their rules, scores, and controversies make these trade-offs unusually visible, but the framework applies to other settings in which expert judgments are aggregated under incomplete information. The framework highlights two core tensions: information control and outlier rules. First, when information is both quality-relevant and identity-revealing, procedures that suppress bias-relevant cues may also remove information with genuine evaluative content. Second, because sincere minority judgment and strategic manipulation can generate similar observed score patterns, score-based exclusion rules may reduce manipulation while limiting legitimate dissent. Two further trade-offs concerning transparency and standardization are developed as illustrations. The analysis shows that no procedure can eliminate all vulnerabilities at once. Beyond this design implication, the framework also helps explain why evaluation rules differ across stages and settings, and why well-intentioned reforms may create new vulnerabilities.

A central question in economics is how talent is allocated across elite professions and whether access is shaped by family ties or by open, standardized systems of selection. We study these questions in Western classical composition, a setting in which family background historically influenced entry through both inherited skill and inherited privilege, and where rich biographical records make it possible to trace selection over multiple centuries. Using data on more than 16,000 composers from 450 CE to the present, we identify dynastic ties from Grove Music Online and measure prominence by biographical entry length. Dynastic composers are 15–21 percent less prominent than non-dynasts, conditional on country and birth cohort, and this discount is driven by descendants: founders perform about as well as non-dynasts, while descendants perform significantly worse. Archival manuscript evidence from the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales yields similar results, suggesting that the pattern is not an artifact of editorial selection. In the twentieth century, however, the dynasty discount reverses, consistent with the transition from informal, family-based entry to more standardized selection through conservatory training. Consistent with this interpretation, dynasts are less likely to have formal training mentioned in their biographies, more likely to be described as advancing through family connections, and face a smaller dynasty discount in regions and periods with conservatories. Taken together, the findings suggest that expanded access to standardized training can weaken inherited advantage, reshape elite formation, and improve talent allocation, with broader implications for long-run innovation and economic performance.

Why do creators sometimes act as firms, internalizing the realization of their work, while in other settings they delegate realization to market intermediaries or operate under hierarchical employment? We develop an analytical framework in which creators choose how to organize realization when contracts are imperfectly enforceable and limits on contractual payments constrain transfers to creators. Delegation can reduce coordination burdens by shifting realization to established intermediaries, but may fail to meet creators’ participation constraints, making self-integration an endogenous response to contracting limitations. The framework highlights how organizational choice depends not only on coordination costs, but also on the feasibility of contractual transfer and the timing of diffusion. We illustrate the model using the history of Western classical music, where composition and realization are technologically distinct yet jointly required for value creation, yielding a transparent make-or-buy setting. The framework is consistent with the historical evolution from salaried employment under patronage, to entrepreneurial self-organization as markets expanded under weak copyright, and ultimately to delegation under mature intermediation and contracting. It also clarifies why composers sometimes sequenced dissemination—using performance before publication—when the timing of diffusion could not be governed through contract. Similar trade-offs shape creator-intermediary relationships in contemporary creative markets.

This paper examines tourism patterns in peripheral regions, analyzing visitor flows and regional variations using big data from a major travel portal. Covering 10 European peripheral regions from 2016 to 2022, the study maps tourist origins and activity levels, offering insights into how tourism functions in these areas compared to less remote destinations. Our approach, validated against international tourism statistics, maps tourist origins and activity levels, comparing peripheral regions with less remote areas. The findings highlight specific patterns of tourist flows, regional disparities in tourism development, and opportunities for promoting sustainable tourism in underdeveloped regions. The findings reveal specific patterns of tourism dynamics in peripheral regions, contributing to a deeper understanding of how tourism develops in these areas and how it differs from more central destinations.

How does family background shape entry into elite professions, and how do changes in training regimes influence the allocation of talent? We study dynasties in Western classical composition, a setting where family ties historically influenced access, and where rich biographical data allow us to trace selection dynamics over multiple centuries. Using data on over 16,000 composers from 450 CE to the present, we identify dynastic ties from Grove Music Online and measure prominence using the length of each composer’s biographical entry. Dynastic composers are between 14 and 21 percent less prominent than their non-dynastic peers, conditional on country and birth cohort. This discount is driven by descendants; founders are as prominent as non-dynasts, while descendants under-perform both. Similar results hold using archival manuscript data from Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, suggesting the pattern is not an artifact of editorial selection. In the twentieth century, the pattern reverses: dynasts become more prominent, consistent with a shift from informal, family-based entry to standardized selection via conservatory training. Supporting this interpretation, we show that dynasts are less likely to have formal training mentioned in their biographies, and that the dynasty discount is smaller in regions and periods where conservatories were present. Our findings suggest that cre-dentialing reforms may have influenced patterns of elite formation and talent allocation, offering broader insight into the relationship between human capital access and long-run economic performance. JEL Codes: O15, J24, J62, I25, N30, Z11

Why do some artists maintain a high level of productivity throughout their careers, while others experience bursts of creativity followed by burnout or stagnation? Existing explanations emphasize economic incentives and human capital but often overlook an artist’s ability to sustain effort over time. We introduce a conceptual framework centered on psychological capital—a stock of confidence, motivation, and resilience that accumulates in response to past creative work and evolves in response to emotional volatility, financial stress, and external feedback—as a dynamic factor in creative production that shapes long-term artistic productivity. By influencing the perceived effort cost of creative work, psychological capital helps explain why some artists enter self-reinforcing cycles of creativity while others disengage. While previous research has examined psychological capital in relation to workplace performance and well-being, its role in sustaining creative careers remains unexplored. We illustrate the framework’s predictions using historical case studies, offering insights for cultural policy and the economics of artistic labor. Although we focus on artists, our framework applies to other creative fields where motivation, external reinforcement, and financial stability shape long-term productivity.

International tourism statistics are notorious for being overly aggregated, lacking in detailed tourist information, not timely, and often provided only on an annual basis. We suggest a unique, complementary data-driven approach relying on big data collected from Tripadvisor. We obtain a systematic, consistent, and reliable approximation for tourism flows, with high precision, frequency, and depth of information. The approach provides also a list of all tourist attractions in a country. We validate the approach pursued and present one application of the data by illuminating the patterns and changes in travel flows in selected European destinations during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This project opens a range of new research questions and possibilities for tourism economics and cultural economics.