The Use of Policies for Competition in the Promotion of Structural Change in Transforming Economies

This article takes as its central theme the idea that competition policy is merely one among many policies which can and should be used to promote competition in an economy. After having considered the importance of competition for any healthy economy, the article examines the inextricable links between competition and transition, in particular marketisation and liberalisation, and discusses in detail the scope for the use of various policies for competition in the transformation process. Within this discussion, particular attention is paid to the importance of the legal and institutional framework, the process of privatisation, macroeconomic stability, ease of entry, supply side policies, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and trade policy in contributing to the development of a market economy. The article concludes by noting the extreme care that must be taken not only in the content of such policies but also in their implementation, something which is easily demonstrated by the experience of developed capitalist economies in the West.     

信任、不信任与民主制的悖论

本文论述了信任与不信任产生的条件.一个全面的信任模型至少要包含三个方面,即"被信任者的可信度"、"信任者的基本信任倾向"以及催生信任的文化因素.信任文化的产生既有结构原因,又有历史原因.本文认为民主秩序是孕育信任的重要力量.     

Fiscal tensions and risk premium

Empirica - The main goal of the paper is to analyse one-dimensional, isolated impact of particular variables which are used in the literature as explanatory variables for risk premium following...     

Partial privatisation: The caveats and expriences

Partial privatisation, in which a more or less large number of residul shareholdings remain in the hands of the state, is a widespread phenomenon in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The following paper compares experiences in Poland with those of the UK, where there has been extensive privatistion of public utilities in the last 20 years, and concludes with some policy recommendations for the transforming countries. The original version of this paper was commissioned by the OECD and presented at its workshop on Management and Sale of Residual Shareholdings, Berlin, Germany, May 1996.     

Testing stationarity of functional time series

Economic and financial data often take the form of a collection of curves observed consecutively over time. Examples include, intraday price curves, yield and term structure curves, and intraday volatility curves. Such curves can be viewed as a time series of functions. A fundamental issue that must be addressed, before an attempt is made to statistically model such data, is whether these curves, perhaps suitably transformed, form a stationary functional time series. This paper formalizes the assumption of stationarity in the context of functional time series and proposes several procedures to test the null hypothesis of stationarity. The tests are nontrivial extensions of the broadly used tests in the KPSS family. The properties of the tests under several alternatives, including change-point and I(1)$I\left(1\right)$, are studied, and new insights, present only in the functional setting are uncovered. The theory is illustrated by a small simulation study and an application to intraday price curves.     

EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION LEGISLATION AND THE GROWTH OF THE SERVICE SECTOR IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In modern developed economies it is the service sector that generates jobs. In Anglo-Saxon economies, where employment protection legislation is low and unions comparatively weak, services account for three-quarters of income and four-fifths of jobs. Yet in France, Germany and Italy, where the reverse is true, the service sector accounts for much less of the economy in terms of income and jobs. This article shows that employment protection legislation – defended by trade unions still dominating manufacturing in continental Europe – results in higher unemployment rates and also negatively affects the growth of services.     

POLONIA dynamics during the years 2006–2012 and the effectiveness of the monetary Policy of the National Bank of Poland

In the study we investigate the effectiveness of the National Bank of Poland in counteracting the negative results of the financial crisis in the Polish interbank market. The situation was exceptional in a sense, that during the period of the financial crisis the Polish interbank market experienced liquidity surplus, and the main problem of the central bank was to regain confidence among commercial banks and stimulate interbank transactions. We concentrate on the spread between the rate of overnight interbank loans and the reference rate and based upon its dynamics we assess the monetary policy of the Polish central bank. Using econometric techniques we study how the central bank influenced the spread, when its control over it weakened and when was it strengthened. The study is supported by the results of the survey directed to the headquarters of commercial banks. We conclude that the ability of the central bank to control overnight rate was temporarily lost during the first phases of the financial crisis, but gradually regained after implementation of the confidence pact.