Infrastructure endowment,financial constraints and willingness to engage in PPPs: The case of Poland

Public-private partnership (PPP) is widely considered to be a solution to overcoming a public infrastructure gap while providing value for money. A growing body of empirical research papers suggests that value for money is not the only reason for a government setting up PPPs. This paper presents a detailed analysis of why local municipalities in Poland have chosen the PPP route to develop public infrastructure.

IMPACT

Government’s investment opportunities are often restricted by debt limits. That is why a PPP can be an attractive solution. Municipalities in Poland seem to opt for PPPs to keep their debt figures low. There is a risk that they are choosing the PPP route for the wrong reasons. Therefore we suggest that legislation is needed that requires greater financial transparency of PPP projects. This could help verify whether PPPs are being compiled according to EUROSTAT rules and to assess if PPP really is the best available option in terms of value for money.     

The Debreu private ownership economy with complementary commodities and prices

Let E_p be a Debreu private ownership economy in which there are some complementary commodities. It means that all commodity bundles are contained in the proper subspace V   of commodity–space [R]l(l∈{1,2,…})${\mathfrak{[R]}}^l\left(l\in \left\{1,2,\dots \right\}\right)$. The production plans maximizing the producers' profits do not have to satisfy the dependency in the qualities of commodities seen in the consumers' plans. It may cause no-existence an equilibrium in economy E_p. The competitive leads, however, to adjustment the production plans to improve the consumers' satisfaction. The procedure of change the production system covering the consumers' requirements is presented. As a result, the model of the private ownership economy with complementary commodities and prices, being the simplification of the initial model, is elaborated. Consequently, the necessary condition for the existence of an equilibrium in the economy E_p is proved.     

Firm Productivity and Foreign Direct Investment into Non‐core Activities*

As foreign direct investment (FDI) often originates from multinational enterprises (MNEs) with non‐core activities and not single‐product firms, as MNE theory typically suggests, we hypothesize that such firms are more productive than MNEs without non‐core activities as well as non‐MNE firms. We test this hypothesis using Kolmogorov–Smirnov stochastic dominance Tests and Japanese firm‐level productivity and FDI data for the period 1985–2001. We find that both manufacturing and service multinational firms with non‐core foreign investments stochastically dominate firms without non‐core activities. We also find cost‐complementarities between certain core and non‐core FDI activities that span both manufacturing and service affiliates.     

Predicting academic success and technological literacy in secondary education: a learning styles perspective

This paper aims to investigate the predictive validity of learning styles on academic achievement and technological literacy (TL). For this purpose, secondary school students were recruited (n = 150). An empirical research design was followed where the TL test was used with a learning style inventory measuring learning orientation, processing information, thinking, perceiving information, physical and time learning preferences, and sociological, emotional, and environmental learning preferences. Student performance was measured with grade point average (GPA) and TL level. Results show that 69 and 65 % of the variance in GPA and TL, respectively, can be explained by learning style predictors. Responsible and visual learning styles are the best positive predictors of GPA, while a reflective learner is the best negative predictor. Self-motivated and global learners are the best positive predictors of TL, while the need for authority figures and a theorist learning orientation are the best negative predictors of TL. The practical implications are that secondary schools should collect learning style data before helping students accordingly to be successful and more technologically literate. Highly conforming, global, and visual theorists might be offered more challenging tasks and special commendations on their projects, whereas more reflective and kinaesthetic students could receive more unstructured instruction in a busy environment with learning objects that incorporate innovative experiences, personalised information, and many associations. Assimilators need more textual material, more criterion-referenced instructions to achieve higher-order thinking learning objectives, more time to complete activities or assignments, more abstract problems, and unconstrained design conditions to improve their TL.     

A co-evolution perspective of EMNE internationalization and institutions: An integrative framework of 5Cs

While significant progress has been made on the contextual role of institutions, scholarly research on the dynamic process of emerging economy multinational enterprises’ (EMNEs) international activities interacting with home country and host country institutions still seems to be in its infancy. Therefore, in order to move the current academic debate forward, we examine the intersection between the internationalization of EMNEs and their institutional environments by undertaking a critical review of the existing literature, given that institutional forces not only shape organizational behavior but also affect EMNEs’ internationalization strategies and organizational outcomes. We propose an integrative framework of 5Cs (context, capability, change, concomitance and configuration) underlying the co-evolution of EMNEs’ internationalization and institutions, and position all the papers included in this Special Issue within this framework in order to point towards a number of directions for future scholarship.     

Business model innovation in corporate entrepreneurship: exploratory insights from corporate accelerators

Corporate accelerators are a rapidly growing entrepreneurial phenomenon occurring in different business contexts and business models within corporate entrepreneurship. Corporate accelerators are considered as an innovation fostering approach within new ventures provided by start-ups. The aim of the paper is twofold: firstly, to explore the motives behind corporations’ engagement with start-ups in launching corporate accelerators, and secondly, to identify the corporate benefits and challenges of this business model innovation. The research design is based on a qualitative interpretative approach exploiting a triangulation of methods by using in-depth interviews (IDI) with corporate managers involved in development of corporate accelerators as well as a focus group interview (FGI) with industry experts. In addition, secondary data were applied to strengthen the exploratory research. The study demonstrates that a wide range of benefits stem from the accelerator activities which can ultimately can initiate changes in large companies. Our research expands on prior findings and suggests that corporate accelerators are driven by internal and external push and pull motives. The study contributes to expanding the scope of corporate entrepreneurship research in regard to the challenges and benefits of corporate accelerators. It provides evidence that corporate accelerators are a source of innovation that can be used to foster entrepreneurial-market logic and entrepreneurial learning.

     

The strategic dilemmas of innovative enterprises: proposals for high‐technology sectors

High levels of research and development (R&D) expenditure, pressure for innovation and the creation of new knowledge are features that distinguish high‐technology (high‐tech) enterprises from other, less technologically advanced, firms. Confronted with multiple contemporary approaches to strategy and turbulence in their environment, these enterprises make strategic choices continuously and dynamically. This paper proposes a model and matrix for the classification of high‐tech enterprises’ development strategies (with regard to their specific features), which are then verified. Qualitative research was conducted in 61 medium and large high‐tech companies based in Poland that operate either in Poland or in the global marketplace. The results show that high‐tech firms have the fundamental goal of developing R&D activity as a resource (and its redundancy) rather than product/market goals. The studied firms strive above all for leadership in innovation, creating new technologies based on their own R&D resources, while also using outside sources and mostly applying the personalisation approach in knowledge management. However, they choose different paths for product and market development, depending on the opportunities presented by the environment, and the firm's ability to identify and take advantage of these.     

Individual wages and regional market potential

In this article, we study wage determinants in Poland by employing the augmented NEG wage equation that controls for individual worker characteristics. Our analysis is based on the Labor Force Survey (LFS) conducted by the Polish Central Statistical Office (CSO) for the period 1999–2009. Using annual data on about 10,000 Polish workers in 16 regions, we find that a significant fraction of inter‐individual wage differences can be explained by the geography of access to markets.     

Estimation of Fisher information using model selection

In the paper the problem of estimation of Fisher information I _f for a univariate density supported on [0, 1] is discussed. A starting point is an observation that when the density belongs to an exponential family of a known dimension, an explicit formula for I _f there allows for its simple estimation. In a general case, for a given random sample, a dimension of an exponential family which approximates it best is sought and then estimator of I _f is constructed for the chosen family. As a measure of quality of fit a modified Bayes Information Criterion is used. The estimator, which is an instance of Post Model Selection Estimation method is proved to be consistent and asymptotically normal when the density belongs to the exponential family. Its consistency is also proved under misspecification when the number of exponential models under consideration increases in a suitable way. Moreover we provide evidence that in most of considered parametric cases the small sample performance of proposed estimator is superior to that of kernel estimators.