Foreign direct investment in the privatisation of the Polish economy

In the 1990s a major change took place in the ownership structure in the Polish economy, with a dramatic shift towards the private sector. The following article examines the different ways in which privatisation has taken place, the penetration of foreign capital into the Polish economy and the role which foreign direct investment has played in the transformation process. The author is an expert of the Goansk Institute for Market Economics; she would like to thank Catherine Lockhead-Strzępka, Institute of Economics at the University of Information Technology in Rzeszów, for corrections to the English translation.     

Strategic Interaction between Governments and Investors under Privatization Programs

This article analyses the strategic moves of governments and investors under privatization programs in a game‐theoretic context. In sequential‐move games of both perfect information and incomplete information, the best response of the strategic investors to observing a slow pace of privatization is to have a low participation in economic activity because of concerns over public policy credibility. This is true even if the government chooses to randomize its action to send mixed signals to the investors while adopting a slow pace of privatization for budgetary reasons. However, the outcome is Pareto inferior to a situation of phased but fast implementation of privatization programs and high private‐sector participation under plausible assumptions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AN ETHICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE USE OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AS A TOOL OF FOREIGN POLICY

This paper is the third in a series of articles that examines the shortcomings of economic sanctions. Drawing on Mill's utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice, the conceptual frameworks of consequentialism, deontology and contractualism are used to demonstrate the unethical nature of this increasingly popular instrument of foreign policy.     

Team Production with Punishment Option: Insights from a Real‐Effort Experiment

This paper analyzes the consequences of allowing for punishment in a real‐effort pair production experiment. The behavior of the best performer in the team differs on whether he or she can impose a sanction on the less performing partner. When sanctions are not allowed, good performers reduce their effort in response to the advantageous difference in scores; when they can impose sanctions, their change in effort is no longer related to the difference in scores. To some extent, a sanction mechanism allows good performers to focus on their own performance. In the case of costless sanctions, not sanctioning a partner who under‐performs, what we refer to as forgiveness, prompts the latter to improve his or her performance, but applying the sanction has a stronger push effect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Tourist Information and Promotion of the Polish Carpathians in Foreign Tourism Markets

The recent years have been a time of rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in tourism. The objective of this article is to analyse and assess the use of ICTs in tourist information and promotion of selected municipalities in the Polish Carpathians, the largest region of mountain tourism in Poland. Particular attention was paid to the activities taken by DMOs, local entrepreneurs and cultural institutions. The use of ICTs in the Polish Carpathians is at a relatively advanced level, but still not sufficient enough to make these solutions a fully effective tool in building a strong regional brand in the international tourism markets.     

The Economic Impact of Medical Migration: An Overview of the Literature

This paper provides an overview of the evidence and applied literature on medical migration. The economic impacts of medical migration have been little researched, causing a polarisation in the debate between its critics and its proponents. The paucity of quantitative studies may be explained by the lack of comprehensive and consistent data. Investments in statistical resources on medical migration are therefore a major priority. The available evidence suggests that particularly English‐speaking countries in Sub‐Saharan African countries and the Caribbean with relatively few health workers and a high disease burden suffer most from the medical brain drain. However, the exodus of health workers is not the main cause of the health status crisis, but rather a symptom of deeper underlying problems, which often extend beyond the health sector towards the broader economic and political environment. In such situations, medical brain drain does pose challenges for human resource management and health service delivery. The only effective and long‐term sustainable policy is one that addresses the underlying push and pull factors. Reforms have to be country‐led, but may be supported via temporary migration schemes, remittances, enhancement of diaspora networks, and financial aid for which a strong moral case exists.     

THE COST OF THE U.S. SUGAR PROGRAM REVISITED

The article analyzes the welfare cost of the U.S. sugar program using a multimarket model of U.S. sweetener markets. The latter includes raw crops, sugar extraction and refining, and sweetener users (food-processing industries and final consumers). The authors address the industrial organization of food industries using sweeteners and treat the United States as a large importer. With the removal of the program, this article estimates (all figures in 1999 dollars) that in 1998 cane growers, sugar beet growers, and processors would have lost $307, $650, and $89 million, respectively; sweetener users would have gained $1.9 billion. World prices would have increased by 13.2%. The deadweight loss of the program is estimated at $532 million.     

Changing investment styles: style creep and style gaming in the hedge fund industry

Notwithstanding their common features, hedge funds remain an extremely diverse asset class. Information on fund styles is important for numerous purposes, such as portfolio construction, performance attribution and risk management. With fund self‐declaration being prone to (strategic) misclassification, return‐based taxonomies grouping funds along similarities in realized returns provide a useful alternative. We provide a consistent classification system of homogeneous groups of hedge funds based on self‐organizing maps. Whereas some fund categories such as managed futures are largely consistent in their self‐declared strategies, others, especially so‐called ‘equity hedge’ funds, display no or very limited return similarities. Furthermore, we also find evidence of fund managers performing undisclosed changes of their trading style over time. Those funds that misclassified themselves once are particularly likely to change their trading style again. Although style self‐declaration can, therefore, be quite misleading, our results indicate that hedge funds do not misdeclare their style strategically to improve their relative performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.