Suchergebnisse

The importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the economic development of Poland cannot be overestimated, both at the regional level and in relation to the economy as a whole. Since FDIs are powered by capital sensitive to various national and international crises, it seems natural to ask whether the situation connected with the global COVID-19 pandemic is reflected in the reduction of FDI inflows to Poland. The aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of the foreign divestment process in the Polish economy as a whole and in its main sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article analyses scenarios of foreign divestment in Poland in an annual perspective, starting from the outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020 up to February 2021. The study used data from a survey conducted in April and May 2020 among nearly 500 enterprises realising FDI in Poland. The benchmark for the surveyed companies was the level of their involvement in FDIs covering a one-year period prior to the announcement of the epidemic. The application of logit models allowed the identification of the most important factors of foreign divestment during COVID-19, including the location of FDIs in the services sector, industry, the IT sector, increased market openness and interactions of variables taking into account the restrictions introduced to the economy due to the pandemic. The level of risk of divestment of these variables depends, however, on the volume of FDI reductions declared by investors and on the sector of the economy. If considerable divestment is assumed, FDIs in the services sector are then burdened with a higher risk of divestment than FDIs in the processing industry. Assuming small divestments, FDIs in the IT sector constitute a factor bearing the greatest risk of FDI reduction in the entire economy.

Abstract

Research background: In the contemporary world, innovations are the driving force of economic development and new products, designs, trademarks and creative projects are of key importance to everyday economic decisions. Both economic theories and empirical research concern relations between innovations and foreign trade. This article belongs to this research trend and is devoted to an analysis of relations between innovations and export competitiveness in selected Central and Eastern European countries.

Purpose: The paper is aimed at assessing the impact of innovation competitiveness on export competitiveness in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Research methodology: The paper contains an analysis with the use of standardised innovation competitiveness and export competitiveness indices. Countries and industry sectors are analysed in terms of the frequency of occurrence of these indices with various combinations of their signs. The impact of innovation competitiveness on export competitiveness has been tested using dynamic models of panel data.

Results: The conducted research indicates that technological advantage usually has a considerable positive impact on the trade competitiveness of Central and Eastern European countries but the strength of the impact depends on the branch of industry. Generally, the influence of technological competitiveness on trade competitiveness is stronger in highly and moderately technologically advanced industries than in industries characterised by low technological advancement.

Novelty: The evaluation of the influence of innovation competitiveness on export competitiveness in Central and Eastern European countries using standardised competitiveness indices and a dynamic model of panel data is an added value in the paper.

Abstract

Research background: Posner's technology gap theories and Vernon's product life cycle assume that differences in innovation and technology levels are the cause of foreign trade. These theories are subject to empirical verification. To date, however, the analysis of the impact of innovation distance on a country's export competitiveness is omitted. This article tries to fill this research gap. The author attempts to examine the relationship between the innovation gap and export competitiveness in industries with varying levels of technological advancement.

Purpose: The aim of the article is to research the direction and strength of the impact of the innovation gap on export competitiveness in 10 different industries in Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEECs).

Research methodology: Dynamic panel models were used in the research, which describe the impact of the technological gap on the export competitiveness of countries. To measure innovation, the indicator of innovative comparative advantage was constructed and based on the number of patents used. The technological gap in individual countries was calculated as the Euclidean distance indicators of the innovative advantage in a given country from other countries.

Results: In light of the presented results of the study, it can be concluded that innovation generally has a significant and positive impact on the competitiveness of exports in the high and medium-high technology industries of the CEECs, while it does not significantly affect the competitiveness of trade in low technology industries. In addition, the Visegrad countries in the high and medium-high technology industries generally have a low technological gap and a smaller distance in export competitiveness using the dynamic panel data model.

Novelty: The added value of this article is an innovative study on the impact of the technological gap on export competitiveness with the example of the CEECs using the dynamic panel data model.

The paper aims at making a comparative analysis of the Central and Eastern European countries in the scope of effects accompanying changes in their export. The Eurostat's data for 2016 were used in the study. The effects of changes in export of individual countries were separated based on the Constant Market Share (CMS) model developed by Leamer and Stern. The calculated effectssuch as: demand effect, market distribution effect, commodity composition effect and competitiveness effect enabled a detailed assessment of the sources of changes occurring in export of individual countries. They allowed, in particular, for answeringthe following question: to what extent may changes in export be explained by the economic situation in the world commodity trade of individual clustersand to what extent do they result from the competitiveness of these countries? The application of the multivariate statistical analysis method for the selected effects allowed for the identification of clusters of countries with the most similar position in the spatial and commodity arrangement, including countries of similar trade competitiveness.

An important element of the foreign trade research is an analysis of its commodity and geographical structure. A method of examining the similarity of foreign trade structure was proposed in this article and applied on the example of certain EU countries. The aim of this article is to assess the degree of similarity of foreign trade structures and to indicate the extent to which it reflects differences in economic development.
The study was conducted with the use of an original indicator of commodity structure similarity and a hierarchical cluster analysis for the period 2006—2015. It enabled to identify the most similar countries in terms of foreign trade structure. Data for the computations were obtained from the Eurostat.
The obtained results proved that countries with similar economic potential have a similar foreign trade structure.

The aim of this article is to describe the relationship between the expenditure structure of Polish voivodships and their sustainable development. The research was conducted on the basis of the CSO data for the years 2013—2015 from the Local Data Bank. Index of matrix similarity was used to examine the similarity of voivodships budget structure. Computed index values allowed to group all pairs of voivodships using the algorithm of vector elimination. In certain clusters, location and variability of selected sustainable development indicators were analyzed. This allowed to check how similarity of the expenditure structure of voivodships had influenced their increased economic and social cohesion.

The purpose of this article is the choice of theoretical models which reflect as closely as possible distributions of income between men and women in the Malopolska voivodship. The study took into account the theoretical distributions commonly used in the analysis of wages and incomes by Polish and foreign authors. For a comparative analysis were selected three best-fit models: Singh-Maddala, Fisk and log-normal. These distributions were tested for estimation accuracy of measurement position, the volatility and inequality in the empirical distribution of income between men and women. Estimation models were based on data on individual incomes of men and women in the Malopolska voivodship in 2013 coming from panel survey, conducted in the framework of the Social Diagnosis. The results were compared with the results of the study of population distributions of income presented in the Polish and foreign literature.

The article contains the comparative analysis of the quality of regional development in Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The quality index of social and economic development has been proposed for this purpose which has been calculated on the basis of a certain aggregation of the results of Principal Component Analysis made on the correlation matrix of standardised variables being the components of the index. The calculated values of the index have allowed for ordering the regions of the Visegrad Group Countries in various aspects of regional development and the evaluation of changes in the development level from the dynamic perspective. Eurostat's Data has been used in calculations.

The paper presents concept verification of the eco-development in powiats in the Małopolskie Voivodship. For this purpose the Regional Development Index was proposed which is based on an aggregation of the Principal Component Analysis results (using the correlation matrix of standardized variables). The values of the development indicator were calculated separately for the area of the socio-economic and the ecological development. The results have been used as the basis for verifying the hypothesis on the balance between social, economic and ecological systems. Development index values were also used to assess the dynamics of development and its prediction in the powiats of the Małopolskie Voivodship.