Economy: It's the Economy, Stupid!
More and more, only slumping financial figures seem powerful enough to turn back creeping authoritarianism in Central Europe.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
More and more, only slumping financial figures seem powerful enough to turn back creeping authoritarianism in Central Europe.
More...
Poland and Co. may be feeling some jitters as the Commission seeks broad new powers against malcontents.
More...
The first cryptographic currency (Bitcoin) was created in 2009. Since then, cryptocurrencies have undergone dynamic development, and their user numbers risen apace. This article analyses and estimates the impact, development and growth of cryptographic currencies on the stability and functioning of financial systems. The paper also examines whether cryptocurrencies fulfill the basic functions of money. The first part addresses technical and legal issues of cryptographic currencies. The second performs a statistical analysis and impact assessment on public finances, banking sector as well as individual users have been performed. Bitcoin quotes are compared to other traditional financial instruments including rate of return, coefficient of variation, range, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The analyses which have been conducted lead to the conclusion that cryptocurrencies cannot be treated equally with money (they are treated more as investment assets), they are far more volatile than traditional financial instruments, and there is a significant similarity between cryptographic currencies and pyramid schemes.
More...
The paper details the life story of Jozef Zelík, nicknamed the “King of Bons”, from Bratislava, who was involved in all kinds of economic crime activities in the normalization period, including foreign currency machinations, speculative sale of Tuzex vouchers and smuggling of precious metals and antiquities. Gradually, he acquired an unusually strong position in this field and was practically a head of a whole net of traffickers and receivers. However, his activities attracted attention from the police and he finally emigrated to Austria in 1982. His case also shows different strategies employed by underhand moneychangers when interacting with Czechoslovakia’s state organs (e.g., unofficial practices aimed at securing the “peace to work”). Zelík’s economic power was also reflected in his pompous lifestyle. Before 1989, opulent consumption and conscious demonstration of one’s wealth was a typical attribute of a social class that benefited from currency crime and other sneaky business. The article is in the form of a case study which makes a connection between one particular story from the Czechoslovak black market and the period (mainly economic and legal) context.
More...
The main goal of this paper is to describe several aspects related to the insertion of recent graduates of superior economic studies on the Romanian labour market. The paper employs the data based on a questionnaire applied to a sample of MAs from Bucharest University of Economic studies. Our results confirm that most of the respondents came to a conclusion that all the suggested abilities (digital competences, creativity, adaptability to crisis-situations, ability to analyse and synthesize information, teamwork and language skills) should be improved in the opinion of their managers. Our outcomes confirm that the good application of the employees’ competences considerably increases the degree of satisfaction among the managers of the companies.
More...
The purpose of the article is to analyse information service – is a new quality level of the traditional library service. As is already known, the 21st century has put a tremendously vital task – organization of information services – before libraries. Information service, which has a significant impact on economic, socio-political and cultural life of society, is a new type of service which differs from traditional library service in meeting the requirements of readers more thoroughly and promptly. In order to understand the goals and objectives of information service and comprehend its essence, it is inevitably important to apprehend the nature of information society influencing on its creation and formation and deeply analyse and study its structure.
More...
Since the transformation of the political system in Poland, almost three decades have passed. It was a period when it was certainly possible to observe changes in priorities in the field of business management. Certainly, the factors that influenced the change of these priorities were the intense privatization processes of state enterprises in the first years of transformation or even the growing role of financial markets (including the Warsaw Stock Exchange in the nineties) (Białowąs 2008a). In addition, the global capital concentration processes had a very large impact on the processes of organizational consolidation among entities of key sectors of the Polish economy, with particular emphasis on entities in the energy sector (Białowąs, 2008b). A similar situation was also observed in all countries of the so-called Eastern Bloc in a similar period (Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Germany, Bulgaria and Romania). The purpose of the article is to try to determine the impact of reorganization activities on the behavior of employees in the context of quality management. This is particularly important if we consider the concept of comprehensive quality management as one of the most important concepts of managing a commercial organization.
More...
In this paper we analyse some 600 recent names of various firms in Łódź and the Łódź region. The analysis concentrates on problems of language correctness and functionalism. The criteria of correctness used in our paper were formulated in 1937 by Zenon Klemensiewicz, according to whom a name of a firm should briefly inform about the firm’s activity, should be concise, easily understood, formed in agreement with rules and tendencies of contemporary Polish, and original. We devote special attention to loan elements at different levels of linguistic analysis: lexical, morphological, phonetic, graphic, and to the so called disintegrating compounds and acronyms, with constitute the most frequent structures in the analysed material.
More...
The aim of the article is to identify changes in the concentration on the market for audit services provided to public companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Ex-change. The additional aim is to identify changes in the level of rotation among firms providing audit services to public companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The research conclusions were based on the analysis of 2 652 annual reports prepared in the years 2011-2016 by companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Ex-change. Reports came from the websites of the surveyed companies. The data was collected manually. It was found that in the years 2011–2016 the concentra-tion in the market for audit services provided to public companies increased. Six audit firms, referred to in the article as “leading” firms, provided their services to over half of public companies. Their share in the audit services market varied across sectors. The level of rotation of audit firms providing their services to public companies in particular sectors was also different. It should be pointed out that the level of concentration in the market for audit services provided to public companies in Poland is lower than the average level of concentration for all EU countries. In Poland, in 2015, the CR4 indicator was around 41%, while the aver-age value of this indicator for the EU countries was around 70%. So far, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the Polish audit services market in the rele-vant literature. This article seeks to fill a research gap in this respect.
More...
The purpose of this paper is to answer the question about the expected changes in average EBITDA, financial leverage and total assets value that will take place after the introduction of IFRS 16, and whether these changes will be the same for all companies - and if not, to what extent they will be different. The research was based on the sample of 172 companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, however, only in the case of 23% of them, the consolidated financial statements contained all the relevant information necessary to carry out the calculations. The calculations were based on 80 consolidated financial statements published for the years 2015-2016 prepared by 40 companies whose shares, at the time of conducting the research, were listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The analysis used a division into companies from the following nine WIG indices: construction, chemistry, energy, IT, media, motorization, real estate, fuels and food. The research allowed a determination of the expected changes in EBITDA, financial leverage and total assets value, and presented differences in these changes between companies from the above indices.
More...
The main purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of changes in accounting for leases, defined in IFRS 16, on the financial situation of selected Polish entities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The following qualitative research methods were used to accomplish the goal: analysis of the literature of the subject and analysis of international reporting standards regarding accounting for leases. In the empirical part of the article, a simulation was carried out. It analyzed the impact of capitalization of operating lease on the selected parts of the balance sheet and changes in profitability of four entities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The results of empirical research indicate an increase in the value of assets and liabilities, a decline in the financial results, and an increase in profitability and debt ratios. The largest changes pertained to the equity and asset debt ratio, which confirms that the application of IFRS 16 will show corporate indebtedness, thus increasing investors' knowledge of the actual risk with which the company is burdened. The main value of this article is the originality of the pilot study carried out. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these are the first practical measurements of the impact of capitalization of operating lease on the changes in profitability and indebtedness of the reporting entities.
More...
The aim of the article is to analyze and assess the comparability of the structure and content of statements of profit or loss and other comprehensive income of listed companies included in the WIG30 index (excluding financial institutions and foreign companies) and to propose some solutions to increase comparability. 21 financial statements for 2016 were analyzed. Two research methods were used: literature review and analysis of the content of financial statements. All companies pre-sented gross profit subtotal, which classified expenses by function in the state-ment of profit or loss and other comprehensive income (almost 75% of analyzed companies). However, some differences were observed in the calculation of that subtotal. The majority of the companies also presented other subtotals which are not required by IAS 1 – an operating profit subtotal and profit before tax subtotal. Generally all companies classified expenses by nature in the manner prescribed in the Polish Accounting Act. IASB should consider a requirement that compa-nies present more additional subtotals in the statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income, and should also prescribe the way of its calculation be-cause many companies in the world (including Poland) present such subtotals. Moreover, in order to increase comparability of this statement, it might be advis-able to introduce more detailed regulations concerning classification of expenses by nature and the place of presentation of the item Share of result of associates and joint ventures, because as some research indicates there are inconsistencies at the global scale. The findings of this research can be useful for the IASB work on changes in the structure and content of the statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income to increase its comparability. Moreover, in Poland, previ-ous research concerning the structure and content of the statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income mainly focused on other comprehensive income rather than profit or loss.
More...
Forest brought through human work that uses the natural forces of nature for the needs of society has become an inseparable part of the present and future of civi-lization. An important task of multifunctional forest management is to mitigate and avoid conflicts between the different functions of forests (productive and non-productive), and consideration of their complementary nature. The impor-tance of non-production functions of forests is growing steadily, to the point that some academics and practitioners are trying to express them in money. They conclude that their value is several (or more) times higher than the value of the effects of production functions. The article aims to (1) present valuation methods for non-productive forest functions that are practiced and can be used in forest man-agement; (2) identify accounting tools that will support the measurement and valuation of non-production forest functions and provide information for deci-sion-making processes for the management staff of the State Forests. For the purposes of this study the following hypothesis was made: "Previous solutions in the field of measurement and valuation of non-production forest functions within the accounting system are insufficient as a source of information for stakeholders of the Polish Forests". On the basis of analysis of accounting literature and na-tional and international regulations in the field of measurement and valuation in the accounting system, the method of induction and deduction, the authors' ex-perience, and information gathered during interviews, the hypothesis has been verified.
More...
The presence of contemporary entities in the cyber-space shows that IT offers unlimited possibilities of running a business and developing an organisation. On the other hand, it involves a greater number of internal and external threats in the area of accounting information resources security. The objective of the paper is to diagnose the current level of accounting information resources security (AIRS) assurance in Polish business entities. The paper analyses two research hypothe-ses. In accordance with the first one, the AIRS assurance level in various entity groups may be different, even though all entities should have implemented the same requirements of the Accounting Act in the analyzed area. The identified differences may result from the effect of additional, industry-specific regulations. The other hypothesis claims that in the private business area, accounting and auditing companies adhere to AIRS regulations more strictly than other small and medium enterprises. The paper defines the fundamental factors affecting the functioning of corporate accounting systems in the three dimensions of the cyber-space. Subsequently, the author presents the results of empirical research on how corporate information security is ensured in the context of internal accounting control systems and the requirements of the Polish Accounting Act. The results of the empirical research show how the management of the analysed entities crafts the basic elements of their internal environment as well as internal com-munication and control processes connected with ensuring information resources security. The results also show the management’s approach to various aspects of risk management of accounting information resources security, as well as to ad-herence to organisational and administrative procedures, and to hardware and software safeguards in the IT environment of the accounting system. The issues analysed in the present paper open a scholarly discussion that should lead to the development of theoretical models, recommendation of efficient methods and tools, as well as indication of adequate legislative initiatives. Research methods used by the author include analysis of literature and legislation, analysis of sur-vey results, deduction and inference.
More...
In the 1950s, Polish accounting was strongly influenced by the accounting system of the Soviet Union. An expression of this state of affairs were, among others, the successive reforms of the Polish uniform chart of accounts, which was eventually replaced by the framework plans of accounts. The introduction of framework charts of accounts entailed a thorough reconstruction of financial reporting. The purpose of the article is characterization of financial reporting of state-owned industrial enterprises, which was in force in the 1950s. The background for the presentation of its basic features and selected elements is provided by a short description of the accounting system in the discussed period, including the framework charts of accounts. The article was written on the basis of a review of books and articles published mainly in the 1950s, in particular by authors such as Stanisław Skrzywan, Edward Wojciechowski and Eufemiusz Terebucha. Financial reporting documents formed the basis for exercising control over the use of state funds, performing planned tasks and the course and increase of accumulation taking place in a given economic unit.
More...
The aim of the article is to present the first Polish professional journal in the field of bookkeeping published in Lviv in the 19th century, which was the source of knowledge for the accountants of that time. As a research method, critical analysis of source materials and literature of the subject has been used. The article discusses the layout, structure and content of the journal, making a division into two sections: bookkeeping and trade skills. Analysis of chosen articles allows identification of accounting issues addressed in that period and the recipients of the journal. The content of the journal is discussed in the context of socio-economic changes in Galicia at the turn of the 19th century.
More...
Some theoretical concepts related to the concept of "Corporate Social Responsibility" are considered. Based on a review of the literature on the topic, the main areas of corporate social responsibility are outlined. The structure and content of the websites of the Bulgarian mobile operators are examined, thereby checking whether and to what extent they are involved in issues concerning corporate social responsibility.
More...
New institutional economics focuses on the role of institutions, (such as advisory institutions), in economic development and influencing human behaviour. The aim of this paper is to present the role played by agricultural advisory institutions in stimulating development processes in rural areas. The study involves an analysis of the operations of Mazowiecki Agricultural Advisory Centre in Warsaw underpinned by scientific literature review which illustrate changes in the scope of advisory services provided in the field of rural tourism and the impact this institution has had on entrepreneurial attitudes of rural residents. Agricultural consultancies, through their operations, influence the change of attitudes of the rural population - from the attitude involving merely ‘waiting for grants’ to entrepreneurial, cooperative attitudes, open to innovations and tailored to market needs. The effectiveness of advisory services in Mazowieckie voivodeship (Mazovia province) is proved by the increased number of agritourism farms regularly cooperating with advisors. The most popular forms of delivered advice promoting agritourism included training provided in-house or as a study visit and individual consultations.
More...
Rural tourism in the Carpathian Region of Ukraine is developing very unevenly and spontaneously without clearly defined strategic plans. Over 90% of rural households providing tourist services operate in three provinces: Lviv, Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk. However, their activity does not result from the smooth functioning of the institutional environment, which consists in the effective co-operation of business, local governments and public organizations. Owners of rural tourism accommodation establishments are increasingly encountering problems related to the legality of their activities, lack of knowledge, gaining new experiences of guest services, tourist products that don’t meet customer requirements, scope of additional services, using of marketing tools, improving the quality of tourist offer, participation in national and international programs supporting local initiatives, environmental protection as well as historical and cultural heritage protection, understanding the importance and the role of rural tourism in local development.
More...
Positive influence of tourism activity on health and well-being of elderly people is undeniable, but tourism offer aimed at specific needs and abilities of this market section is relatively limited, although seniors constitute a growing and — as a result — more and more important group of customers with buying potential. Polish seniors, unlike their Western counterparts indicate a low level of tourism consumption. The main reason for this situation is both a limited buying potential of Polish seniors, and the system of values in which tourism and other active ways of spending free time are relatively low in the rank. The purpose of the review paper is to present the main aspects pointing at the need to treat seniors as important buyers of tourist and recreational services.
More...