The Department of Economics I carries out research and teaching in the broad area of economics, including a variety of demographic, institutional, and social determinants. The team of the Department critically refers to diverse historically important schools of economics, but it uses modern tools and concentrates its research on contemporary problems. The Department is also open for discussion and cooperation which transgresses traditional borders of the discipline.
Historically, the Department of Economics I was preceded by the Department of Political Economy, which was established in 1956 and operated within the Faculty of Trade at the Central School of Planning and Statistics (Polish: Szkoła Główna Planowania i Statystyki, SGPiS – the former name of the Warsaw School of Economics). The Department of Political Economy was initially chaired by Professor Aleksy Wakar (1898–1966), a graduate and a long-time faculty member of the School, who is regarded as one of the most important figures in its 100-year history. The team of Professor Wakar initiated a unique strand of research, which applied and developed general equilibrium theory in the study of centrally planned economies (his results were published, among others, in the American Economic Review). Professor Wakar’s approach, work style, and research results have been referred to as “the Wakar school” by many Polish economists.