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Modeling Economic Growth in Contemporary Poland

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Entrepreneurship and Global Economic Growth

Series editor: Bruno S. Sergi, Harvard University, USA

Entrepreneurship and Global Economic Growth is Emerald's cutting-edge Global Economic Growth book series, presenting modern examinations of economic growth at national, regional and global levels. Each book in this series discusses different dimensions of the changing economic and industrial contexts, and examines in detail their impact on the nature of growth and development. For academics and senior practitioners, this series puts forward significant new research in the global economic growth field, opening discussions regarding new topics and updating existing literature

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Modeling Economic Growth in Contemporary Poland

Edited By

Elżbieta Bukalska

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland

Tomasz Kijek

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland

And

Bruno S. Sergi

Harvard University, USA & University of Messina, Italy

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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First edition 2024

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List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Elżbieta Bukalska, PhD, D Sc, works as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (Poland). She has teaching, research and practical experience in corporate finance. She gives lectures on corporate finance, financial analysis, business plan, capital structure and dividend policy and value-based management. She is the author or co-author of over 70 publications. Her research interests include capital structure, dividend and share repurchase policy, small and medium enterprises, IPO, and companies on the capital market.

Tomasz Kijek has been a Professor at the Department of Microeconomics and Applied Economics at University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska, Poland since 2017. He holds a doctoral degree in Economics. His current scientific interests include economics of innovation and knowledge, spatial aspects of innovation processes and productivity and efficiency analyses. He has had more than 100 articles published in refereed journals, and is a frequent speaker in international conferences. Recipient of two National Science Centre in Poland grants and Huygens scholarship.

Bruno S. Sergi, PhD, is an instructor at Harvard University, where his teaching portfolio includes courses on emerging markets and development economics. At Harvard, he is a Faculty Affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Center for International Development. He is a Full Professor of Political Economy at the University of Messina, Italy. He is the Series Editor for Cambridge Elements in the Economics of Emerging Markets (Cambridge University Press) and Entrepreneurship and Global Economic Growth book series at Emerald Publishing. His areas of research and teaching are related to the broader subject of the political economy of emerging markets, with a focus on sustainable development and technology. To further research in these areas, he is the chairperson and co-director of the Lab for Entrepreneurship and Development (LEAD) based in Cambridge, USA.

About the Contributors

Marek Angowski, PhD works at the Department of Microeconomics and Applied Economics, Faculty of Economics, Maria Skłodowska-Curie University in Lublin. As far as research-didactic activity is concerned his interests encompass marketing and management problems in enterprises of agribusiness sector, research and analysis of food market consumer behaviours as well as entrepreneurship development on rural areas. He combines his didactic activity with practice through cooperation with territorial self-government (making expert opinions) as well as conducting trainings within entrepreneurship supporting. He is an author of many science publications, expert opinions as well as research and scientific studies; Participant of many conferences both domestic and international within competitiveness and management in agribusiness, marketing and consumers behaviours. He is the member of Polish Economic Society, Agriculture and Agribusiness Economists Association, Polish Scientific Society of Marketing and Eurasia Business and Economics Society.

Michał Bernardelli, Associate Professor in the Institute of Econometrics in the Collegium of Economic Analysis at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics (Poland). He is the Deputy Dean of Graduate Studies (2020–2024), Head of the Physical Education and Sports Centre since 2015. He has graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw in 2003 with two master's degrees: in mathematics and computer studies. At the same faculty, in 2008, he was awarded a doctoral degree in the mathematical sciences with a specialisation in applied mathematics. In 2020, he obtained his habilitation in the field of economic sciences. For more than 20 years he was a consultant and contractor of many scientific and commercial projects. The interdisciplinarity of his scientific works is based mainly on the use of the IT and mathematical apparatus to solve problems in areas related to data analysis and exploration, in particular in Big Data issues, predictive methods and optimisation.

Jakub Bis is an Economist with a PhD in Economics and currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Lublin University of Technology, Faculty of Management. In addition to his academic role, he holds the position of Vice President at the Lublin branch of the Scientific Society for Organization and Management. With over 16 years of experience as a lecturer and more than 11 years as a trainer, Dr Bis has authored or co-authored dozens of articles, monographs and scientific papers, and has participated in numerous training and research projects. He has completed various courses and training programs in management and personal development. Dr Bis is passionate about new trends and working with people. His scientific and research interests focus on the issues of foreign direct investments, special economic zones and startups.

Sebastian Bobowski, PhD in Economics and Finance, is an Associate Professor at the Wroclaw University of Economics and Business. He is the author and co-author of more than 100 research papers, 12 handbooks and monographs in the fields of trade regionalism, international business, innovativeness of regions and enterprises, GVCs. He is a member of the European Southeast Asian Studies Association (EuroSEAS), Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES), Polish Association for International Studies (PTSM) and Asia-Pacific Research Center in Wroclaw.

Piotr Bolibok is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic Policy and Banking at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. His current research concentrates on financial macroeconomics and macroprudential policy with a special focus on the macroeconomic consequences of private sector leverage. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including monographs, journal articles and book chapters.

Anna Budzyńska, Institute of Economics and Finance, University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska (UMCS), pl. M. Curie-Skłodowskiej 5, 20-031 Lublin, Poland. Currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microeconomics and Applied Economics at UMCS. In 2019, she was awarded a PhD in Economic Sciences after defending her doctoral dissertation titled Competitiveness on the EU Sugar Market Against World Trends at the Collegium of Socio-Economics of the Warsaw School of Economics. She has also worked in the Controlling Department of a company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. She is the author of two scientific monographs: European Sugar Market in the Conditions of Globalisation, UMCS Publishing House, Lublin 2020, and Sources of Competitiveness of the Polish Sugar Sector, written in collaboration with A. Matras-Bolibok, UMCS Publishing House, Lublin 2019. She has also published more than 20 articles in various scientific journals.

Wiesława Caputa is employed at the WSB University as a Professor. Her research interests focus on the process of creation and valuation of customer capital. She is the author or co-author of over 170 publications, including two monographs, funded by the National Science Centre.

Jakub Czerniak, PhD, D Sc, works as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (Poland). He graduated from the Faculty of Economics in 2001 and from the Faculty of Law in 2002. Employed as an academic teacher at the Faculty of Economics since 2004, he has teaching and research experience mostly in macroeconomics and innovation policy. He is an author or co-author of almost 30 publications.

Arkadiusz Gola, D Sc, PhD Eng., works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Production and Computerisation at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Lublin University of Technology (Poland). In 2011, he received a PhD from Lublin University of Technology (Poland) and in 2019 he received a habilitation from Cracow University of Technology (Poland). He is an author or co-author of 7 scientific monographs, 102 research papers and 108 chapters. His actual H-index in Web of Science is 19 and 19 in the Scopus database. Arkadiusz Gola is an Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Computer Science journal, a President of the Polish Associate for Knowledge Promotion and a member of the Polish Society of Production Management. Since 2014, he has been an expert at the Polish National Centre of Research and Development. He specialises in manufacturing systems design, operation management and intralogistics.

Bartosz Jóźwik, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of International Economics at the Institute of Economics and Finance at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. Prior to his current position, he held academic appointments at various institutions, including the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the United States in 2017-2018. His research interests include European economic integration, economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe and environmental economics, with a focus on pollution, climate change and natural resource management. Recently, Jóźwik has published several articles and books related to these topics, such as the article ‘Revisiting the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: A case of Central Europe’ in Energies (2021) and the book ‘Real economic convergence of the Central and Eastern European EU Member States. Transformation, integration and cohesion policy’ (2017).

Armand Kasztelan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin (Poland). He was the Head of the Department from 2017 to 2021. He is employed as a Lecturer at the Zamość Academy. His research interests are in the economics of sustainable development with particular emphasis on the environmental determinants of regional and national competitiveness and the role of natural capital in economic growth and development processes. He is author or co-author of 75 scientific and popular science publications. The University of Life Sciences Rector repeatedly awarded him for scientific activity. In 2022, he received the Polish Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (PAERE) award for the best branch publication entitled: On the Road to a Green Economy: How Do European Union Countries ‘Do Their Homework’? He has participated in more than 40 scientific conferences of national and international scope. He is a member of the European Regional Science Association Polish Section and the Polish Economic Society. He has participated in Erasmus+ programme and university coordinator for cooperation with the Association of Polish Banks.

Mariusz Kicia, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), Poland, is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Economics and Finance, Department of Banking and Financial Markets. Dean of the Faculty of Economics at UMCS since September 2020. Member of the Industrial Council for Competences in Modern Business Services in Poland. His research interests are behavioural finance, fintech and agent-based modelling.

Arkadiusz Kijek, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Statistics and Econometrics at the Institute of Economics and Finance at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland. His primary research interests are econometrics, statistics, data analysis and business cycles. He has authored or co-authored over 50 articles published in refereed journals. Recently, he has published several articles and books in the field of convergence, such as the articles ‘Club Convergence in R&D Expenditure across European Regions’ in Sustainability (2022), ‘The Patterns of Energy Innovation Convergence across European Countries’ in Energies (2021), ‘Club convergence of labour productivity in agriculture: Evidence from EU countries’ in Agricultural Economics – Czech (2020) and the book ‘Innovation and Regional Technological Convergence. Theory and Evidence’ (2023).

Dominika Kordela, University of Szczecin, Poland, is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economics and Finance, where she has been a Scientific Council member since 2019. She received her PhD degree in economics based on a thesis on alternative markets. Her research interests focus on alternative markets, alternative finance and SME financing. She has experience teaching various courses in the finance field, also at foreign universities.

Aleksandra Kowalska is a Professor in the Institute of Economics and Finance at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland. Her research interests are in food integrity, the role of rapid alert systems and information technology in data exchange along the food supply chain, sustainable food systems, food security issues and consumer behaviour studies. She has published in numerous peer-review journals, authored book chapters and written two books in the area of food integrity and sustainable economy. Two-time project leader in projects funded by the National Science Centre in Poland and a team member in another research project funded by this institution.

Izabela Krawczyk-Sokołowska is a Professor employed at the Czestochowa University of Technology and is the author or co-author of over 150 publications. The main area of research interest is innovation, strategic management and sustainable development.

Sophia Lingham, PhD, is a Researcher at the Royal Agricultural University, UK. Her research is focused on sustainable food systems, food policy, food security and the socio-economic aspects of food networks and food SMEs; she concentrates on horizontal linkages between food and drink SMEs. She holds a Masters in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security (with Distinction) from the RAU and a First Class Bachelors of Law Degree from the Open University.

Louise Manning is a Professor and works at the University of Lincoln, UK. She is an academic researcher, writer, communicator and educator. Her research is focused on the critical issues in society, food and farming including sustainability, resilience, values, integrity and trust. She has had over 100 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has written and published many books for a range of audiences. She is Editor of British Food Journal.

Małgorzata Markowska is a Professor at the Department of Regional Economics at Wrocław University of Economics and Business, Poland, since 2013. Her research deals with econometric measurement, evaluation, variability and dynamics of development, competitiveness, knowledge-based economy, smart specialisations, convergence and innovativeness in European regional space. As an author or co-author she published more than 110 scientific papers and 25 chapters in books, and recently her own dissertation ‘Dynamic Taxonomy of Regions' Innovativeness’. She took part in 12 scientific projects financed by National Science Centre in Poland and European Union, and in projects for governmental, local administration and business units.

Anna Matras-Bolibok is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microeconomics and Applied Economics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. Her research interests focus on the role of innovation in regional economic development. She has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers and scientific reports for local and regional government authorities.

Damian Maye is a Professor and works at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. His research covers agri-food studies, geographies of food and rural geography, with a particular focus on agri-food sustainability, governance and social innovation. He recently co-authored a major new book on Geographies of Food. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Rural Studies and Chair of the RGS-IBG Food Geographies Research Group.

Anna Nowak, PhD, Associate Professor – Head of the Department of Economics and Agribusiness, University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Akademicka 13, 20-950 Lublin, Poland. Her research interests focus on agricultural competitiveness, convergence in agriculture, bioeconomy, development of agriculture and farms, productivity of production factors in agriculture, spatial differentiation of agriculture and international agri-food trade. She is the author or co-author of 139 publications and a reviewer of numerous scientific publications. Co-author of, for instance, 2-volume monograph titled Polskie rolnictwo wobec wyzwań współczesności. T. 1, Wymiar ekonomiczno-strukturalny (Contemporary Challenges for Polish Agriculture, V. 1, The Economic and Structural Dimension) and Polskie rolnictwo wobec wyzwań współczesności. T. 2, Wymiar społeczny i środowiskowy (Contemporary Challenges for Polish Agriculture, V. 2, The Social and Environmental Dimension). She is an observer in the Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan (2023–2027) Monitoring Committee at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Pawel Pasierbiak, PhD, is an Associate Professor of International Economics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland. His scientific fields of interest are International Economics, Regional Economic Integration, European Integration, Asian Economic Integration, Economic Development and Labour Markets. Recently, he was a principal investigator and MCSU consortium coordinator of the EACEA project: Establishing a Europe-Asia Research Network on Strategies for Promoting Europe-Asia Connectivity (SPEAC) under Erasmus Plus, Jean Monnet Network. His current research concerns various aspects of global value chains (GVCs).

Artur Paździor is a Professor at the Lublin University of Technology, Head of the Department of Finance and Accounting at the Faculty of Management. He is the author or co-author of over 120 scientific publications and over 100 business projects on entities valuation, investment effectiveness, restructuring projects and strategic and financial analyses.

Dawid Piątek, Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland. With Habilitation and PhD in economics, he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Macroeconomics and Development Studies of the Poznań University of Economics and Business. He is interested in macroeconomics, institutional economics and post-socialist transition. He studies institutional economic growth factors as well. He is the author and co-author of several dozens of scientific publications; Co-author of a course book and teaching materials for macroeconomics lectures and classes.

Michał Bernard Pietrzak, PhD, D Sc is an Associate Professor at the Gdansk University of Technology, Faculty of Management and Economics. He is an experienced econometrician specialising in the application of quantitative methods, with particular emphasis on the methods of multivariate comparative analysis, financial econometrics and spatial econometrics. His research results are confirmed by more than 90 articles published in the Web of Science Core Collection, where the Web of Science h-index is 18. The research problems he has undertaken have been related to the fields of Economics, Management and Finance.

Mariusz Próchniak, Professor in the Department of Economics II in the Collegium of World Economy at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics (Poland). He is the Dean of Collegium of World Economy (2020–2024). Since July 2022, he is a full Professor of social sciences in the discipline of economics and finance. In 2015, he received the habilitation degree in the field of economic sciences in the discipline of economics. He has worked at SGH Warsaw School of Economics since 2002 – at the beginning as an assistant, then Assistant Professor and Associate Professor, and currently – full Professor. He is the author of many articles published among others in the journals: Economic Modelling, Eastern European Economics, Post-Communist Economies, Gospodarka Narodowa, Ekonomista and Bank i Kredyt. He participated in many research projects funded, e.g. by the National Science Centre in Poland and the National Bank of Poland.

Mariusz Sagan, PhD is an expert and practitioner in stimulating strategic development, promoting entrepreneurship, devising development strategies for cities and attracting international investors. Since 2009, he is an Associate Professor in the Collegium of Business Administration at SGH Warsaw School of Economics. He is the author and co-author of over 100 publications on regional and urban development, international business and company management; this includes a considerable number of articles in prestigious magazines, e.g. Cross Cultural Management, Managing Service Quality, Marketing Education Review, Chinese Management Studies and Energies. He presented his research outcomes at conferences in several countries, e.g. China, the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Portugal, etc. In the years 2014–2016, he is a member of the Global Advisory Board in the Center for Leadership and Management at Rutgers University in the United States.

Ilona Skibińska-Fabrowska, PhD, Department of Insurance and Investment (Faculty of Economics) at the Maria Curie Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland. Her research focuses on finance and banking (particularly central banking, corporate capital structure and micro-enterprise finance). She is the author and co-author of numerous publications in this field.

Tomasz Sosnowski is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology at the University of Lodz, Poland. He received his PhD in economics in 2013. His research interests focus on corporate governance, investment decisions, finance and accounting. He has conducted extensive research on topics such as private equity funds, IPO and corporate governance practices. In addition, he has also investigated issues related to financial reporting quality, earnings management and the influence of regulatory frameworks on corporate behaviour. He has published numerous papers in international and national journals and is a reviewer for several academic journals and conferences.

Adam Sulich is an Associate Professor at the Department of Advanced Research in Management, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business, Wroclaw (Poland) and Visiting Researcher at Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto (Canada). His main scientific interests are the problems of ensuring sustainable development and the efficiency of enterprise operations in extraordinarily complex and dynamic environmental conditions. His research interests include green jobs, sustainable strategic management, green economy, network relationships, business ecosystems and sustainable development. He also gained scientific experience during the Erasmus+ exchange programs at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium) and Technical University in Ostrava (Czechia). In the business sphere, he specialises primarily in strategic analyses, including the valuation of intangible assets and the green jobs assessment. He developed or co-authored several business reports on strategic analysis and sustainable change management.

Andrzej Szablewski is a Professor of Economics. For the past 30 years, issues concerning various theoretical and practical aspects of liberalisation of the network industries, in particular the energy sector, have been his main field of interest. He is the author and co-author of over 100 publications on this area. He has participated in and led a number of research projects, including EU financed projects. Some of his recent and most important books include: Zarys teorii i praktyki reform regulacyjnych na przykładzie energetyki (2003), Liberalizacja a bezpieczeństwo dostaw energii elektrycznej (2012) and Regulacyjny wymiar liberalizacji. Wnioski dla sektora ciepłownictwa systemowego (2015). In addition to his academic and research activity, he advised numerous government bodies and committees on restructuring and regulation of energy sector as well as competition and energy policy. Currently, he is a Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Katarzyna Szarzec, Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Macroeconomics and Development Studies at the Poznań University of Economics and Business in Poland (PUEB). She received her PhD and habilitation in economics from the PUEB. Her publications focus on political economy, macroeconomics, comparative economic systems and post-socialist countries. Her latest research is about state ownership and the role of state-owned enterprises in contemporary economies.

Anna Szelągowska, PhD, is a Full Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Innovative City (Collegium of Business Administration) at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics. Her research focuses on finance and banking (particularly determinants of banking sector development), financial innovations, financial frauds, real estate finance, social housing policy and silver economy. She is an author of more than 200 publications, including 9 books and 16 edited books.

Bartosz Totleben, Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland. An Assistant Professor at the Poznan University of Economics and Business, Institute of Economics, Poznań. In 2018 he received a PhD in economics from the Faculty of Economics, Poznan University of Economics and Business. His research interests include political analysis, determinants of state failure, rent-seeking activities and development in fragile states. He is the author and co-author for more than 15 scientific publications including articles, chapters and books.

Anna Wawryszuk-Misztal received her PhD in economics. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Corporate Finance and Accounting at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. Her main area of research interest is financial management. She conducts research on corporate governance, board diversity, initial public offerings and financial disclosures. She is the author of the book entitled Financial factors and consequences of diversifying the composition of management and supervisory boards of Polish public companies, published by Wydawnictwo UMCS in Lublin in 2021.

Łukasz Wiechetek, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (Poland). He has teaching, research and practical experience in deploying information systems and managing IT projects. Łukasz Wiechetek is the author or co-author of over 70 publications. His research interests include e-business, IT project management, digital society development, cybersecurity, automated data analysis and technology-enhanced teaching and learning.

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, Poland has been among the fastest-growing countries in the European Union. It was the only country in the EU that avoided economic recession during the global crisis in 2008–2009. Trying to explain the sources of Poland's economic success and decouple it from simple stylised facts on economic convergence anchored in the neoclassical growth models, this book shows how the Polish economy rapidly moved away from the communist economic system, which had ended up in an economic collapse, and took the road to unprecedented growth in income and the quality of life. The authors apply the three-way perspective on drivers and barriers to Poland's economic growth.

In the first part of the monograph, special attention is given to the transition and contemporary challenges of the Polish economy. Chapter 1 focuses on the main drivers of Polish economic growth from the perspective of the past, the present and the future. It emphasises the role of capital accumulation and labour force in explaining the growth of the Polish economy. The experience of Poland from the economic transition is then discussed in depth in Chapter 2. The authors deal with four aspects of the changes in the Polish economy, i.e. stabilisation, liberalisation, institutional reforms and privatisation. The following chapter outlines the topic of income convergence process among regions in Poland. The empirical analyses included in this chapter provide important insights into the effectiveness of regional policy in Poland. Chapter 4 shifts considerations towards the transformation of the Polish economy into the Green Economy (GE). The authors apply the Green Transformation Index to analyse the transformation towards GE in Poland. The current issues related to economic resilience of the Polish economy and food security are addressed in the next two chapters. The former studies the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on the situation of Polish consumers and the resulting behaviour in the context of business–consumer relations. The latter identifies and reviews food security challenges that governments and societies have faced during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond, with specific emphasis on Poland.

The second part of the monograph is dedicated to the issues related to the institutional and policy framework of the Polish economy growth. In Chapter 7, the authors investigate the impact of Polish monetary policy on investment outlays in contexts of high uncertainty. The fiscal and monetary policy are also subject to a broader discussion in the next chapter. It tackles dependencies between fiscal and monetary policy and the capital market in Poland. Chapter 9 is to deepen and widen the topics concerning mutual similarity among the characteristics of the financial sector (including the monetary policy by the central bank) and the characteristics of the real sector (e.g. economic growth), as well as cross-similarity between both sectors in Poland and selected Central and Eastern European countries. The further three chapters present non-macroeconomic policies that are key for reaping the sustainable growth in Poland. The first one portrays and evaluates the key developments in the innovation policy and national innovation system of Poland. Theoretical considerations in this chapter are supported by the empirical analyses of changes in Poland's innovation policy and innovation system frameworks. The second one shows new opportunities in Poland's decarbonisation energy policy. More specifically, it considers from an economic perspective the potential role of nuclear power in decarbonising the Polish power sector. The last part of the triptych tries to evaluate the significance of the common agricultural policy to the growth and development of agriculture and to structural transformations therein triggered primarily by the influx of additional CAP funds into Poland.

The final part of this book shows prospects of economic growth in Poland. These themes are discussed from the micro, mezo and macro perspectives. Chapter 13 tries to address the question whether imitation or innovation is the right key to the economic growth in Poland from both the conceptual and the empirical perspectives. The next chapter describes the present state and the trends in the ICT sector, which today is considered to be one of the most progressively developing part of the Polish economy. Changing the perspective, Chapter 15 presents the evolution of Poland's participation in global value chains since the mid-1990s, including its key determinants. Two further chapters bring attention to the challenges faced by the Polish companies. The first one provides a better understanding of the attitude of Polish companies towards diversity policies and reveals differences in actual and expected levels of gender diversity in corporate boards. The second one identifies the Polish companies' stability in the crisis situations especially during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 and COVID-19 crisis. This part of the monograph closes Chapter 16 relating to entrepreneurial ecosystems in Poland. It discusses and verifies the role of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the development of enterprises in Poland.

This book is suitable for practitioners and academics interested in discovering the foundations for the Polish growth miracle and finding whether this growth will likely last in the future.

Preface

Leszek Balcerowicz

Warsaw School of Economics

Warsaw, 13th April, 2023

The post-communist transition in Europe is one of the most important transformations in modern history. Like other radical shifts in history, its timing and its crucial events were totally unexpected. Market-oriented reforms had been introduced under democratic political regimes in the post-communist transition. Therefore, the transition was both economic and political.

Poland was a pioneer in this transition respect entering the path towards a well-functioning market economy. The exceptional growth performance of the Polish economy after 1989 obviously poses questions about its causes. This book tries to give an answer to this question raised by tackling the most important issues from Poland's recent and past: the sources of economic success, the process of transition and structural achievements.

Poland's transition is analysed in the micro, mezo and macro perspectives and takes into account: the whole economy, financial market, fiscal policy, monetary policy, entrepreneurship behaviour and new technologies. The authors provide in-depth analyses and consider the changes in the Poland's external conditions: the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. This book sheds light on actions providing food security, implementing a diversity policy and response to climate changes in the context of the Polish economy and firms. In my opinion, it deserves to be thoroughly read.