The Small Border Traffic Zone between Poland and Kaliningrad Region (Russia): The Impact of a Local Visa-Free Border Regime

After Poland’s accession to the EU, the Polish-Russian border became the EU external border. This significantly changed its nature and started the new type of cross border relation. Since 2012, when the Small Border Traffic (SBT) zone came into force, the border has changed its blockade function and started instead to be treated as a resource. The fundamental loosening of the border crossing regime reduced the social and functional distance between Poland and Kaliningrad, and in a broader sense between EU and Kaliningrad. This paper will try to show how small but meaningful initiative, the SBT, has had an impact on cross-border region. The present paper will describe the relationship between larger geopolitical actors and how they affect local border relations. The aim of this paper is to present phenomenon of new visa regime at the Polish-Russian border. The paper likewise describes the impact of the SBT on local communities and their economies, as well as national relations between adjacent countries. The analysis is based on the interviews and surveys conducted in the Polish-Russian border region in late 2014.     

Managing capital flows in Poland, 1995-98

Poland has been encouraging foreign direct investment, including the purchase of company shares, but has been attempting to limit the inflow of speculative short-term capital. The policy so far has been effective without the use of any capital controls. The paper explains the policy and the reasons for its apparent success. The paper also discusses the evolving threats to macroeconomic stability of the Polish economy and policy responses to these threats.     

能源博弈与互依共存

一场围绕能源的新的大博弈即将来临。推动这一大变化的最主要力量是全球对于气候变化和能源安全的共同关注。在这场博弈中,国家利益在传统的市场规则中扮演越来越重要的角色。对于生产国和消费国来说,共同的挑战是认清互相依存的现实并为达成谅解而建立组织框架。中国目前的发展正锁定其能源消费模式从而带动未来数十年的能源需求。从消费角度来讲,中国、印度和美国在决定这场全球能源博弈规则的过程中,将扮演最重要的角色。资源民族主义的崛起以及全球寻找能源的行为,正迫使每个国家重新考虑各自的外交政策以及联盟关系。国家石油企业正寻求私营石油公司的技术,二者需要建立起与过去不同的新型合作关系。气候变化和能源安全带来的大变化大挑战,是这场能源大博弈的所有参与者都要面对的。关键在于创建可转化为互相信任和依存关系的利益平衡的理解框架。     

Tourism in protected areas: The case of Poland

The interrelationship between tourism and the protection of the environment plays a large part in Polish tourism and policy-making and is reflected in the extensive legislation aimed at the protection of natural resource attractions. In June 1983 a ‘Spatial System of Protected Areas’ was adopted by the General Committee for Tourism. This identified with three concomitant tourism strategies, three different regions for environmental protection: national parks and nature reserves, landscape parks and protected landscape areas.     

Whence reform? A critique of the stiglitz perspective

This paper discusses the key hypotheses which Joseph Stiglitz proposed, in his wide-ranging critique of the “Washington Consensus”, with regard to transition reforms and economic policies in China and Russia. The primary purpose is to evaluate the Stiglitz perspective in the light of empirical evidence, including the experience of countries outside China and Russia. Although some of the points Stiglitz makes are important for understanding what has happened in the transition, this paper argues that his perspective mis-interprets the key facts of the Chinese transition, mis-describes the facts of the Russian transition and fails to consider the theoretical and policy implications of the success of a “third model”, which is represented by some Central European and Baltic transitions.     

WHO''s health futures consultation

The World Health Organization's 1993 consultation on health futures examined the field from perspectives of the macro-environment, health status, health resources, emerging health technology, alternative care systems, and tools for health futures research. The consultation produced numerous suggestions about how WHO could promote and support health futures work. Among the ideas now being implemented are new efforts in global surveillance of infectious diseases, the publication of health futures articles, the establishment of an electronic health futures bulletin board, and preparation of a handbook for health futures studies.     

Kornai's soft budget constraint and the shortage phenomenon: A criticism and restatement

Concluding Remarks In this paper we have sought to modify Kornai's analysis of the shortage phenomenon. One point and two modifications are suggested. The point is that firms' budget softness in real terms, while generally probably higher under socialism than capitalism, is always limited enough for any economies still to remain very much productive. One modification is that, in the theory of the shortage phenomenon, the key operational variable is not the degree of budget softness, provided it is not too high as to make the economy unproductive, but a quite different concept of the degree of budget flexibility. Our example of the Leyland-type economy and references to Yugoslav economy were intended to make this proposition evident. In this and any other soft-budget economy the degree of softness is, instead, linked with inefficiency, both static and dynamic. The other modification is that while the household does have a hard budget constraint and the firm has a soft one, sufficiently high prices for consumer goods would nevertheless be able to abolish any consumer goods' shortages.An important topic which has been alluded to, but not discussed in this paper, is Kornai's suggestion that there may operate a trade-off between the rate of unemployment and the degree of goods shortages. This topic is related to a number of issues, one of which is the validity of equating shortage economy with resource-constrained economy. To indicate a potential problem, it may be noted—as Kornai himself does—that an abstract, perfectly competitive economy is free of shortage (as well as of unemployment), and yet it is resource-constrained (as well as demand-constrained). Actual market-based economies are from time to time also resource-constrained, but the point is that the distance to full employment is, in those economies, related to the inflation rate (the Phillips curve) rather than to the incidence of shortage (Kornai's suggestion), especially if the upward price flexibility is high. However, these are matters which may be better left for separate treatment.This paper was written when the author was Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, the University of Pennsylvania. Its ideas were presented earlier, at seminars at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. The paper benefited much from detailed critical comments from Wlodzimierz Brus of Wolfson College, Oxford, Philip Hanson of the University of Birmingham, UK, Cezary Jozefiak of Lodz University, Poland, János Kornai, Kazimierz Laski of Linz University, Austria, Herbert Levine of the University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Wiles of the London School of Economics.     

Technological condition for balanced growth: A criticism and restatement

According to prevailing opinion, only the neutral form of technological progress in the Harrod sense is consistent with balanced growth in a one-sector constant returns-to-scale economy. Though various definitions of balanced growth are in use in the literature, the above highly restrictive technological condition is believed to hold for all of them. The paper demonstrates that this belief is not correct. The condition is shown to be false if the definition of balanced growth (i) does not require the constancy of the marginal product of capital (or the interest rate), and (ii) permits the time semiinfinite or indeed any finite balanced growth path. More specifically, under (i) and (ii) there exists a balanced growth path consistent with a significantly wide class of technological changes of the capital-using (labour-saving) form in the Harrod sense. Alternatively, this condition is correct if either (i) the interest rate is required to be constant or (ii) growth is balanced if it is such for all time—that is, for both past and future. The condition is also correct if the socioeconomic institutions are such that the constancy of the savings ratio implies the constancy of the capital share.     

Economic factors in the democratization of socialism and the socialization of capitalism

Part I discusses Wlodzimierz Brus' neo-Marxian theory of social change: political democratization as a necessary requirement for socialization of public means of production, and socialization necessary for economic efficiency. Then there is a short discussion of some related features of Marxian theory. Part II gives a model of technological change and of the dynamics of long-run growth. This leads to a discussion of the role of capitalism and authoritarian socialism in rapid growth. The author concludes that for “true democratic socialism” to evolve, the growth explosion of the industrial revolution should have run its course.