Based on China’s provincial panel data from 2009 to 2019, this paper empirically tests and analyzes the effects of industrial agglomeration and other important economic variables on industrial green technology innovation efficiency from the perspective of spatial statistical analysis. The results show that the efficiency of China’s industrial green innovation has not changed much during the study period, exhibiting an obvious polarization phenomenon. Moreover, the improvement of the degree of industrial agglomeration is conducive to the regional green innovation efficiency level. This means that industrial agglomeration produces effective environmental and innovation benefits. In addition, the influence coefficient of enterprise-scale is negative, indicating that for Chinese industrial enterprises, the enlargement of the production scale weakens the promotion effect of R&D activities. The influence coefficient of human capital is negative, mainly because the direct effect has a small and positive value, while the indirect effect (spillover effect) has a negative and large value, indicating that the spillover effect of human capital between regions in China is deficient.

This study examines the causal links between improvements in economic freedom and changes in GDP per capita of new EU members in transition in the period 2000‒2009. The empirical results suggest significant causality running from changes in monetary and fiscal freedom, trade openness, regulation of credit, labour, and business, legal structure and security of property rights, and access to sound money to movements in GDP per capita, especially in less and moderately developed CEE transition countries. Moreover, we find evidence that improvements in economic freedom are one of the main factors stimulating the convergence of these economies towards rich EU members. The evidence of causality in the opposite direction is much weaker.

The article raised issues related to the design and execution of low-energy objects in Polish conditions. Based on the designed single-family house, adapted to the requirements of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management ("NF40" standard), the tools to assist investment decisions by investors were shown. An economic analysis and a multi-criteria analysis were performed using AHP method which had provided an answer to the question whether it is worthwhile to bear higher investment costs in order to adjust to the standards of energy-efficient buildings that fulfil a minimal energy consumption's requirements contained in Polish law. In addition, the variant of object that had optimal characteristics due to the different preferences of investors was indicated. This paper includes analysis and observations on the attempts to unify that part of the building sector, which so far is considered to be personalized, and objects in accordance with the corresponding idea are designed as "custom-made".

We discuss econometric modeling with Prof. Aleksander Welfe from the University of Łódź and Warsaw School of Economics (SGH), Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The article addresses the issues falling within the scope of the economic analysis of a detached building’s heating system with a direct evaporation ground source heat pump installation. The paper was elaborated based on the data made available by the investment’s contractor and the investor. The paper provides data on the investment expenditures and utility cost, calculations of the installation payback, internal return rate and the current net value.

The paper contains the economic analysis of the carried out modernisation of the facilities of a water-park consisting in fitting solar collectors for heating of tap hot water and central heating system. The article presents the data showing investment outlays, operating costs and the calculations concerning the payback time.

The scope of the paper refers to long- and medium-run trends of labour supply in Poland. The main purpose is to determine current trends in the labour supply and its projections till the year 2050. In the theoretical part of the paper determinants of labour supply are considered. The projections are based on the population forecasts till 2050 made by the Central Statistical Office of Poland (CSO) and by the authors’ own simulations. Several variants of upper limit of working age and activity rates are taken into account. The population forecasts by the CSO indicate it will occur big decrease of working age population till 2050. The biggest decrease will refer to the group of working age 18–59/64 years and the lowest decrease in the age group 18–66 years. The analysis shows that the declines in labour supply in the years 2020–2050 will occur in all variants of working age population, the biggest decline in the variant assuming the age group 18–59/64 and the smallest decline – in the group 15–74 years. Retirement age is of big importance for the size of labour supply. This is why it is recommended to encourage older people to prolong their economic activity. It is also necessary to increase activity rates in the working age population.

Biogas production has a big potential to provide clean energy. To evaluate the future production and maturity of biogas technology the generalized Weng model was proved to be effective, due to it has the minimum error. The simple algorithms to determine its parameters have been proposed. The simulation results for China, USA, and EU have been presented. The quantity and quality analysis for biogas feedstock has been carried out. Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) indicator for different biofuels was considered. According to analysis done biogas from maize residue and chicken manure has high EROEI. Shannon Index was suggested to evaluate the diversity of feedstock supply. Biomass energy cost indicator was grounded to be used for feedstock energy and cost assessment. Biogas utilization pathways have been shown. Biogas boilers and CHP have the highest thermal efficiency, but biogas (biomethane) has the highest potential to earn as a petrol substitute. Utilization of biogas upgrading by-product (carbon dioxide) enhances profitability of biogas projects. Methods to assess the optimal pathways have been described.

The problem of regional diversity is the subject of a broad scientific discourse. The dynamics of territory development is connected with many factors. Among them, the so-called spaces for development opportunities of individual units and resiliance issues for external factors of regions. The author discusses the diversity of individuals from the point of view of these two factors. It indicates future directions of regional research, which will show why regions at the start with potentially the same structure are developing completely differently and why in most cases resistance is associated with innovation and in the case of Polish regions it is not.

The issue of assessing socio-economic impacts represent a key element of the decisionmaking process on the implementation of major public investment projects. The correctness of the decision depends both on the chosen principle of the socio-economic analysis and the input data. The presented article focuses on updating selected input values for the socio-economic assessment of railway infrastructure projects. Specifically, the simplified values of the estimated rail accidents costs. Accident costs are used for considering the change in the safety. At present, these values, which are also stated in the national methodological resources, are based on statistical data of the entire European Union and thus do not reflect the possible national specifics of projects implemented in the territory of individual Member States. The principle of updating values is from a methodological point of view based on the original calculation principles, however, involves a set of information items on the occurrences that emerged in the past in a specific area. The output of the article is a set of methodological steps considering national conditions when determining the average accident costs, subsequently verified on a case study of the railway network in the Czech Republic. The outputs of the presented article directly build on the results of the research project in which the team of article authors has been involved. The research results refer to different values of accident costs uniformly determined for the entire European Union territory and those determined individually for the conditions of the railway infrastructure in the Czech Republic.

This article presents an investigation of solar power plants’ economic efficiency in the case of energy prosumers. The economic effect of the development of solar energy, the environmental effect of the transition to green energy and the social effect due to lower electricity costs and investment growth from the use of photovoltaic installations (PVI) have been proven. The level of annual savings in PVI due to changes in production and own consumption of electricity are determined. Through use of factor analysis, the grouping method, the method of generalizing indicators, quantitative data collection for solar PV systems and the matrix method, the two main hypotheses were proven: (i) solar energy production should be stimulated by a sound state tariff policy; (ii) prosumers as players of the electricity market should be considered in the tariff policy. It is revealed that at current interest rates, PVI operational activity is subject to more complex factors, and the main one becomes economic, namely considering the economy of consumers, the level of taxation or grants of PVI activities, as well as productivity and the real state of technical condition of devices. The provided research develops the theoretical and empirical basis for the state policy of solar electricity usage with consideration to the peculiarities of its production and consumption. The process of production and consumption of electricity in PVI is not characterized by uniformity, which is derived from a number of factors, primarily from natural and climatic conditions. It also depends on the technical characteristics of the devices.

The approach of a unilateral impact of the financial sector on economic growth was invalidated by the last financial crisis which very quickly changed into a global economic crisis.

The aim of the study is the analysis of the impact of the financial sector on economic growth in the context of the growing phenomenon of financialization, which was one of the significant reasons of the financial crisis. The study was focused on presenting the growing scale of this phenomenon and analysing the impact of money supply in USD and EUR on world GDP and the GDP of the USA and the Eurozone. The following hypothesis was postulated: the growing process of financialization causes the growth of the USD and EUR supply, influencing changes in the world GDP, the GDP of the USA and the Eurozone. The study confirmed the hypothesis of the relation of the money supply with changes in economic growth. However, influencing economic growth with the money supply causes the purchasing power of business entities to decrease and causes growing debt. Furthermore, it does not contribute to the strength of the real economy. A repair of the current “system“ should not be sought for in constantly increasing macroprudential regulations, but in a return to a country’s interventionism, leading to a change in the priorities of the actions of financial institutions; mainly banks, and the supply of money based on fixed parities (gold, energy).

This study examines the impact of monetary policy on economic growth in Ukraine between 2006 and 2019. After the stationarity and co-integration tests, a vector- autoregressive model (VAM) was used to estimate the impact of monetary factors on economic growth in Ukraine. The research results show that GDP changes are largely explained by its own earlier dynamics, but in the long-run real GDP quite strongly depends on the money supply, exchange rate against euro, and basic interest rate. At the same time GDP is weakly dependent on the exchange rate against US dollar, CPI and PPI, the volume of loans to business and external debt. The authors explain their findings and compare them with several other empirical studies on the subject concerning some other countries.

The article aims to explain whether in 2004–2015 Poland experienced economic convergence between regions and counties (Polish: powiat), and whether this process occurred within the regions (Polish: województwo). Following Poland’s EU accession, the Polish policy became dominated by the polarization and diffusion concept of regional development, which may cause differences in the short term, while in the long run it may contribute not only to the increased efficiency of public funds allocation, but also to the elimination of disparities in growth levels. In the analysed period Poland experienced a process of economic divergence between the regions, only the years 2006–2008 saw a short-term reduction in regional disparities. On the other hand, a slow process of reducing economic inequalities between counties took place after 2004. It was, however, varied – a clear reduction in disparities occurred between the land counties (Polish: powiat ziemski) in an almost monotonic manner, whereas city counties (Polish: miasto na prawach powiatu) did not undergo any convergence. Within the regions, the process of economic convergence varied: in five regions, β-convergence was identified, and σ-convergence occurred in all the regions. The process of reducing disparities was significantly dependent on the development pathway of the region.

Socio-economic development as well as factors and determinants of development. The scientific language, as well as everyday and literary language, is in constant development. The effect of this development is the multiplication of flavored notions and concepts leading to many misunderstandings and ambiguities, which should not happen in the scientific language. The presented texts should be written in a language that is clear, simple, logical, unambiguous and understandable, and their interpretation should not cause problems. This article presents remarks concerning the interpretation of such basic notions of socio-economic sciences as socio-economic development, economic growth and factors and conditions of development, quite freely used in scientific texts. It also contains the correct interpretation of these notions, especially in reference to the language of socio-economic geography, regional economics and socio-economic and spatial development and planning. Only an unambiguously interpreted text can be a platform for mutual understanding, basis for scientific discussion and the way to the the real development of science.

This paper proposes a fair calculation approach for the cost and emission of generators. Generators also have reactive power requirements along with the active power demand to meet up the total power demand. In this paper, firstly the reactive power is calculated considering the random active power operating points on the capability curve of a generator then the cost for reactive power generation as well as emission are calculated. In order to develop the mathematical function for the reactive power cost and reactive power emission, a curve-fitting technique is applied, which gives the generalised reactive power cost and reactive power emission functions. At the end, the problem is formulated as a multiobjective problem, considering conflicting objectives such as combined active- reactive economic dispatch and combined active-reactive emission dispatch. The problem is converted from the multiobjective load dispatch problem (MOLDP) into a scalar problem, using the weighting method and the best compromised solution has been calculated using the particle swarmoptimization (PSO) technique.Afuzzy cardinal method has been applied to choose the best solution. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of developed functions the proposed method is applied on a 3 generator unit system and a 10 generator unit system, the results obtained show its validity and effectiveness.

The study was conducted to assess and substantiate the key systemic problems of the national engineering of different countries in the context of economic globalization. To achieve this goal, the study used the author’s method to assess the dependence of mechanical engineering in Ukraine, Poland and Germany on imports of intermediate goods. According to the results, it was determined that in the periods of increasing economic globalization of mechanical engineering in Ukraine, Poland and Germany has undergone systemic destructive changes and is in a threatening state, from the standpoint of economic security. In particular, in Ukrainian and Polish mechanical engineering, the dependence on imports of high-tech intermediate goods is excessively high. In contrast, German engineering, unlike Ukraine’s and Poland’s, is less dependent on imports of high-tech products, but requires much more resource-intensive intermediate goods. It is analytically substantiated that the identified problems with the import dependence of mechanical engineering in Ukraine, Poland and Germany are the result of irrational, one-sided perception of economic globalization by the main economic entities of these countries.

Presented paper adresses issue of key research areas, which are important for development of backward regions in Poland. Proposed areas of priority research activities concentrates on: building resilience of regional structures on socio-economic crises; using megatrends impact on development paths; implementing public intervention generating economic growth; developing territorial keys for development; utilising capacity of cities, especially biggest; increasing quality of public management, strengthening of innovativeness and competitiveness of EU regions and cities; using better social and cultural dimension of socio-economic development; increasing potential of cross-border cooperation and using new development concepts, monitoring of socio-economic development through objective measuring of levels and paths. For Poland It is very important to use research activities to support process of closing gap with more affl uent EU regions.

Equilibrium, disequilibrium and adaptation. The inspirations for spatial economics. This paper is a part of author’s long-term research project related to dynamics and evolution of space economy. In the attempts of theoretical reconstruction of these processes the notion of equilibrium plays an important role, as well as related notions: disequilibrium and adaptation. In the analysis of equilibrium the author drew on the concepts elaborated by the neoclassical school of economics. In the analysis of disequilibrium the concept of physics turned out to be fertilizing, namely the concept of dissipative structures and self-organisation. The concept of adaptation is elaborated in depth in biology. These three concepts have been applied in spatial economics long since. Further research is necessary however, to make these application more relevant to spatial economics, and in this way more fruitful.

The paper discusses Bayesian productivity analysis of 27 EU Member States, USA, Japan and Switzerland. Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Analysis and a two-stage structural decomposition of output growth are used to trace sources of output growth. This allows us to separate the impacts of capital accumulation, labour growth, technical progress and technical efficiency change on economic development. Since estimates of the growth components are conditioned upon model parameterisation and the underlying assumptions, a number of possible specifications are considered. The best model for decomposing output growth is chosen based on the highest marginal data density, which is calculated using adjusted harmonic mean estimator.

The purpose of this empirical study is to find the relationship between economic growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) using endogenous technological change model. First, we combine the CIS and CEECs into one group to test our hypothesis, and then we test each group separately to account for heterogeneity and draw a conclusion whether FDI is indeed a driving force of the economy. Panel data have been used from 2003 to 2014 and different panel estimation methods have been applied. Additionally, we use the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel estimator to control for endogeneity problem. The present study finds that FDI is an important factor explaining economic growth in the pooled group and CEECs, although it is not significant in the case of CIS.

In many research studies it is argued that it is possible to extract useful information about future real economic activity from the performance of financial markets. However, this study goes further and shows that it is not only possible to use expectations derived from financial markets to forecast future economic activity, but that data about the financial system can be used for this purpose as well. This paper sheds light on the ability to forecast real economic activity, based on additional and different financial variables than what have been presented so far.

The research is conducted for the Polish emerging economy on the basis of monthly data. The results suggest that, based purely on the data from the financial system, it is possible to construct reasonable measures that can, even for an emerging economy, effectively forecast future real economic activity. The outcomes are proved by two different econometric methods, namely, by a time series analysis and by a probit model. All presented models are tested in-sample and out-of-sample.

The article presents a framework for integrating historical sources with elements of the geographical space recorded in unique cartographic materials. The aim of the project was to elaborate a method of integrating spatial data sources that would facilitate studying and presenting the phenomena of economic history. The proposed methodology for multimedia integration of old materials made it possible to demonstrate the successive stages of the transformation which was characteristic of the 19th-century space. The point of reference for this process of integrating information was topographic maps from the first half of the 19th century, while the research area comprised the castle complex in Kórnik together with the small town – the pre-industrial landscape in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). On the basis of map and plan transformation, graphic processing of the scans of old drawings, texture mapping of the facades of historic buildings, and a 360° panorama, the source material collected was integrated. The final product was a few-minute-long video, composed of nine sequences. It captures the changing form of the castle building together with its facades, the castle park, and its further topographic and urban surroundings, since the beginning of the 19th century till the present day. For a topographic map sheet dating back to the first half of the 19th century, in which the hachuring method had been used to present land relief, a terrain model was generated. The transition from parallel to bird’s-eye-view perspective served to demonstrate the distinctive character of the pre-industrial landscape.