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In this article, we analyse the influence of the banks’ market power and efficiency in the transmission of monetary policy in central and eastern European countries. The role of other factors, such as liquidity and capitalisation levels and the size of the bank concerned, has already been studied, but the impact of market power and efficiency levels has not, to our knowledge, been the subject of any study. In this article, we try to shed light on this subject. We measure market power in terms of the Lerner Index, while efficiency scores are determined by the parameter frontier approach. Our results confirm the conclusions of previous studies: higher levels of liquidity and capitalisation and a higher amount of banking assets reduce the repercussions of monetary policy for banks’ lending behaviour. Concerning the market power and efficiency of banks, we show that the more efficient the bank is and the higher market power that it has, the lesser the impact of monetary policy on its lending activity.
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This article presents updated indicators of employment protection legislation for several central and eastern European countries according to OECD methodology. Common patterns and outliers are identified and additional information is provided to interpret correctly the strictness of the regulatory environment. The aim is to provide some hard evidence for the debate regarding the interface between employment protection legislation and labour markets and welfare, based on the legislations applying in central and east European countries at the end of 2003. The article focuses on the 22 aspects of employment regulation encompassed within the OECD model, examining how each relates to the employment protection legislation in force in each country, and scores each one based on the relative restrictiveness of the regulation. The article concludes that the occurrence of informal arrangements complicates the picture but that this does not invalidate the usefulness of examining formal rules in detail.
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Social policy as an instrument of social justice is nowadays in the focus of attention of scientists, politicians, economists and experts on strategies for the economic and technological development of society. Today, there is not a single modern society that is giving up the concept of social justice as one of its cornerstones. Naturally, different societies and different policies, depending on a whole series of social factors, understand the content and meaning of social justice in different ways, while the material possibilities and character of social organisation determine its objective achievements. Social justice today, just like throughout the entire history of humankind, has various meanings, is complex and accessible to a different degree. Social policy is a group of functionally-interconnected institutions and instruments through which social justice is exercised. This question of social justice – that is, of social policy – is often being opened in a specific and often highly conflicting way in transition countries, including Serbia.
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This article examines briefly the response of trade unions to the financial crisis, from the perspective of the situation in Romania and the viewpoint of the Cartel Alfa trade union. The author explains that the country was already under pressure from the IMF and the EU arising from the impact of the country’s attempt to join the Eurozone in 2014, but that a lack of capacity in the political arena is also presenting difficulties for the social situation, as is the hot topic of pensions reform. Cartel Alfa has called for measures to be taken in three directions which are aimed at helping to resolve the pressure, as well as for senior corporate executives in Romania to observe the principles of decent work. The union also wants to see agreements on the minimum wage observed, as a part of the essential process of achieving an effective social dialogue through which answers to the crisis may be established.
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The aim of this paper is to examine the transformative processes that are defining the region of south-east Europe in the context of global financial crisis and in the post-Lisbon era. It is also intended to illuminate the current challenges of the region’s EU integration process. Judged in terms of overall stability, European integration processes in the western Balkans have almost never been as promising as they are today. Recent events in south-east Europe are profoundly changing the old continent. The establishment of largely peaceful regimes throughout the region, along with the accession to the EU of the rest of the former socialist bloc, offers new possibilities for freedom, respect for human rights and genuine socio-economic improvement. Such developments as Kosovo’s independence and the admission to NATO of Albania and Croatia are of no less significance for a more prosperous and stable landscape.
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Fortunately, there is no imminent threat of a crisis at present, however, the strong political support for the implementation of major conceptual reforms and the collective realization of long term dangers are missing. The author summarizes his evaluation in 13 points. The first: it is trivial but unfortunately true that at the turn of the millennium the Hungarian economy left the course of sustainable growth (growth that can be funded). The further 12 points give detailed analysis of the different problems of the Hungarian economy, including the budget deficit, the growing state debt and the loss in credibility of both the fiscal and monetary policy.
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Former EU Commissioner for Agriculture expresses his views about the hot issues of the Hungarian agriculture after the recent farmer demonstration. As he writes: in the difficult situation at the time it was widely believed that the country's membership in the EU would be a miracle cure for all political debates, would resolve all the problems of the agriculture overnight, while the funds from Brussels would take care of income needs. Perhaps it is no surprise that disappointment is in the air; the miracle cure doesn't live up to the promises of the doctors who prescribed it. What is the solution? A long term agricultural strategy - this is the author's answer.
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The real question is: should the Hungarian and Central European capital markets be taken seriously? When an average enterprise in the region is looking for financing opportunities, does it consider the issue of securities, or for the time being this kind of financing is the privilege of only a few big players? The authors analyse the situation of the Hungarian, Czech and Polish securities markets, the changing role of the state and the future of the Central Eastern European Stock Exchanges including the possibilities of different merging variations.
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One of the challenges for the contemporary Polish village is the transformation of its economic structure. It is necessary not only to create new jobs in the non-agricultural sector, but also to increase the competitiveness of enterprises. In their activities, entrepreneurs may use local resources in an innovative way. The author of the present article focuses on the following question: “What is the potential of entrepreneurs as far as the innovation based on local resources is concerned?”. Innovation is defined as a way of using local resources which emphasizes the specificity of an area. In her research (undertook in 2012), the author analyzed the local resources of the Pilica River Valley and the applications for support (from Rural Development Programme 2007–2013) submitted by the entrepreneurs to the local action group. The entrepreneurs (in their activity) do not use the resources which have been identified in the local development strategy. The additional funding allowed them to increase the competitiveness of their companies, but was not used to make their activities more innovative.
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The work sets out to demonstrate the circumstances, origins, nature and scale of the world financial crisis which has been ravaging the entire world, including the United States of America, Europe and Poland, for well nigh two years now. Particular emphasis is placed here on showing the economic and socio-political consequences of the current crises in terms of Poland. The author thus undertakes an attempt to diagnose and analyse the process in statu nascendi, around which fierce disputes rage between the representatives of various social sciences, including economists, as well as politicians and commentators. Nonetheless, this is essential if we wish to address questions as to the economic, socio-political and international impact of the current crisis on both the world as a whole, and on individual states. There is no way that the current crisis can be effectively fought without knowing the origins and causes which must be eliminated in order to avoid similar problems in the future. However, this cannot be achieved by eliminating only the symptoms, and not the effects, of the current crisis. The difficulties in addressing the questions regarding the implications that the global/world financial crisis holds for Poland are aggravated by the fact that there are still no serious scholarly works, syntheses or in-depth analyses relating to the issue. To date, barely a handful of scholarly conferences have been arranged and very few books have been published, either in Poland or abroad. It thus transpires that the crisis caught not only politicians, but also the academic milieux, especially economists and political scientists, unawares. Some amongst them continue to maintain that in our contemporary world, undergoing globalisation as it is, a deep foreign exchange crisis simply cannot occur, while others have put, and continue to put, their faith in a neo-liberal ordering of the world's economy. However, within the mass media, numerous and often contradictory opinions and commentaries on events encroaching upon the world’s economy, have appeared. In the main, they take the form of journalistic opinion, or political propaganda and are used in ongoing political battles in individual states; in this, Poland is also included.
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The aim of this study is a comparative analysis of European Union countries in terms of human capital. Determination of the stock and prospects of human capital development is an important issue today, both in economic theory and business practice. In this study soft modeling method was used. It allows measurement of unobserved variables.
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This paper contains the attempt to describe the phenomenon of shadow economy as a zero-sum non-cooperative, normal form game between households and the government. In the model government spending can be treated as a government consumption or as an expenses that contribute to increased social welfare and for the provision of public goods and services. We conduct sensitivity analysis of Nash equilibrium in models with two different types of government expenditure and examine whether proposed models indicate a various mechanisms and determinants of the undeclared economic activity.
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The construction is important in a market economy. From the development of the construction industry depends on large extent how the economy will function. Hence, the need for continuous monitoring of both –the market and the use of methods- that will objectively evaluate the quality of the construction companies. The paper contains consideration about usage discriminant analysis in financial audit of construction companies. 30 companies from construction sector, which are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, were selected for study. The analysis encompassed financial data from balance sheets and from profit and loss account in the period from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2012.
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In the current literature, many different stochastic extensions of the DEA framework can be found. Such generalized approaches enable one to model the uncertainty inherent to the form of the production possibility set and the value of the technical efficiency measure at any given point of the former. In the paper we provide a detailed discussion of some statistical model and the subsampling algorithm which are used in statistical inference. The methodology is then illustrated with an empirical example using the real-world data from the Polish energy sector.
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This paper aims at identifying factors (external and internal) affecting the ability of an enterprise to survive on the market. The analysis is based on the results of a retrospective study conducted in 2012 on a sample of enterprises from Malopolska voivodeship. Methods and models of event history analysis, including semiparametric Cox’s model were applied to analyse enterprises’ survival. The approach based on the event history analysis allows us to include dynamics of the process. The results provided extensive data on how factors such as size, activity sector, market range, legal form and internals conditions like: owner characteristics, investments, profits, reported barriers affect the survival of enterprises.
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Consider a finite population of N units. Let θ∈(0,1) denotes the fraction of units with a given property. The problem is in interval estimation of θ on the basis of a sample drawn due to the simple random sampling without re¬pla¬ce¬ment. It is of interest to obtain confidence intervals of a prescribed length. In the paper the minimal sample size which guarantees the length to not exceed the given value is calculated.
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The aim of the study is to examine the robustness of the estimates and standard errors in the case of different structure of the sample and its size. The two-level model with a random intercept, slope and fixed effects, estimated using maximum likelihood, was taken into account. We used Monte Carlo simulation, performed on a sample of the equipotent groups
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The aim of this work is to present fuzzy clustering algorithm for objects, which can be described by mixed feature-type symbolic data and fuzzy data. The main idea is the transformation of mixed feature-type symbolic data and fuzzy data into histogram-valued symbolic data. Fuzzy classification is very useful in case, when classes are difficult separated, mixed objects can be classified into class with the fixed degree of membership.
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The scope of Polish macro-economic data for assessing the level of socio-economic development of the country is largely limited because of the regional variation. Therefore there is a need for cyclic selection and the verification of criteria which allow identifying regions with a similar level of socio-economic development or those that clearly differ from the mean values. The aim of the study is to compare Poland’s provinces in terms of their socio-economic development, which helps identify the most similar regions as far as the adopted criteria are concerned.
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