Wage and Price Inflation in Poland in the Period of Transition: The Cointegration Analysis

The paper focuses on the long run relationships between wages, prices and labour productivity in the Polish economy by applying recent developments in the field of multivariate cointegration analysis. We followed modeling strategy which is suggested by Greenslade et al. (1999) and present all stages of the analysis which leads to the fully economically identified system of equations representing long run relationships. The investigation is based on the quarterly data from 1992.1 to 1999.2 which covers the period of transition of the Polish economy from the centrally planned system towards the market one. Basing on the empirical results we can argue that wages (costs) were one of the main forces driving inflation in Poland during that period. Also labor productivity proved to be stimulated by the increase of the real wages. On the other hand the hypothesis concerning the relationship between wages and unemployment was rejected by the data.     

Modelling wages in centrally planned economies: The case of Poland

The main idea developed in this paper is that rising excess demand for the labour force results in higher growth of wages over the ‘notional’ rate of growth. The rationale is that employees change their jobs searching for higher wages, and employers are willing to offer higher pay in order to get additional workers. This relationship is highly nonlinear, and can be regarded as an extension of the idea known as the Phillips curve to the area of ‘negative’ rate of unemployment. Additionally, one can observe that if the disequilibrium intensity in the labour market is small, its changes cause stronger reactions of wages in strategic branches than in the remaining sectors of the economy. It is similar to the situation of excess demand for labour. If there is a high rate of unemployment, reductions of wages affect more branches of secondary importance for the economy. The empirical investigation is based on Polish data covering the time period from 1964 through 1984. As excess demand for labour is unobservable, a proxy is used as an indicator of disequilibrium. It is introduced to the equation explaining the rate of growth of average wages, in addition to the rate of productivity growth of labour and the rate of inflation. Estimates are derived for 10 industry branches and sectors of the economy. The results confirm the initial hypothesis.     

Price-wage dynamics in a transition economy: The case of Poland

In this paper we analyse the wage-price relationship of an economy in transition characterized by important structural changes. It is known (see Perron, 1989) that structural breaks in stationary time series can induce apparent unit roots. The stationarity analysis of the series employed in the present model is conducted jointly with the assumption that the breakpoint location is unknown. We follow a testing procedure recently proposed by Zivot and Andrews (1992). Cointegration analysis of wages and prices in the presence of structural breaks finds empirical evidence in favour of two cointegrating vectors involving prices and wages. Our analysis focuses on the different structural behaviour of the price-wage dynamic relationship in the short and long term; we also demonstrate the relative importance of import prices as a source of wage-price fluctuations.     

The economic transformation of Eastern Europe: the case of Poland

This article identifies the main features of Poland's radical transition to capitalism-stabilization program, trade liberalization, and privatization reform. The ‘shock therapy’ adopted by Poland in 1991 is presented as the most effective approach, though not without political risk. In fact, the major threat to Poland's transition process is the emergence of well organized ‘interest groups’ putting increasing demand on the government to relax financial restrictions and re-open large-scale subsidization. These political pressures have already caused a slowdown in the privatization program, so that there is a possibility of the renewal of rapid inflation. Several methods for accelerated privatization, including the distribution of vouchers and setting up investment funds to manage portfolios of shares, are discussed in detail.     

Capital punishment in Poland: The debate continues

Throughout its modern history, Poland has not escaped controversies surrounding the use of the death penalty. Tracing the historical development of laws dealing with the issue demonstrates an evolution influenced by various legal, political, social, philosophical, and international factors, leading up to the current absence of the penalty from the Polish legal system. The debate in society revolves around some stereotypical views held by different social groups. One of the biggest challenges is how to reconcile those views with empirical evidence, especially on issues like the deterrent effect of capital punishment. The authors describe the death penalty debate in Poland from these perspectives and take a retentionist position with regard to some selected crimes. As long as there are individuals willing to take other people's lives in a premeditated and deliberate manner demonstrating callous contempt for another person's existence, death remains the only punishment satisfying a sense of social justice and upholding the value of human life.     

Foreign direct investment and the volume of trade: the case of Poland

In this paper we study empirically the relationship between the volume of trade and foreign direct investment in Poland using the FDI augmented gravity equation derived from the modified Chamberlin–Heckscher–Ohlin model with multinational firms and complete specialization in production. We find that FDI contributes positively to the development of international trade between Poland and OECD countries, although the complete specialization C–H–O model with multinational firms does not find support in the data. In contrast, it seems that incomplete specialization H–O model better explains Poland’s trade with the OECD countries. The lack of support for the complete specialization model suggests that the vertical model of the multinational firm may not be appropriate for explaining trade and FDI patterns between Poland and the OECD countries. Therefore, other than labor cost reduction motives might explain the expansion of multinational firms’ activity in Poland. In the light of provided empirical evidence the fears of relocation of labor intensive assembly plants from the west to the east may not be fully justified.     

Privatizing the Police-State: The Case of Poland

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The Price-Wage Mechanism in Poland: An Endogenous Switching Model

This paper proposes a two-equation price-wage model that enables to test whether the inflationary pressure on wage rate is only present when the rate of inflation is greater than some threshold value. Since the likelihood function for this model is very nonstandard, we develop a small-sample Bayesian approach to estimate its parameters. Our empirical results for Poland, 1962–1993, give support to the hypothesis of the price- wage spiral with a positive threshold value of inflation.     

The Constitution-Making Process in Poland*

The process of constitution making in Poland since 1989, and the content of the two draft constitutions prepared separately by the Sejm and the Senate are described in this paper. The relatively weak sense of constitutionalism in Poland's tradition is commented on and compared with the role of judicial review by the courts and constitutional tribunals in the United States and Europe. The latter part of the article discusses the role of the Church, the civil society, the unions and voluntary associations in constitution making and in the post-Communist society in general.     

The price-wage inflationary spiral in Poland

In this paper the problem of price-wage relationship modelling in the case of a mixed economy is addressed. The empirical investigation was based on Polish annual data for the period of a centrally planned system (1964–1989) and on quarterly data for the period of transition towards a market economy (1990.1–1990.3). The traditional approach proved to be inappropriate because of the variables' nonstationarity. Identification of long-run behaviour was attempted by applying the two-step Engle-Granger's, or alternatively, Johansen's maximum likelihood (ML) procedures. The ML estimator provided better estimates of cointegration vectors and, even more important, allowed as many as three to be found. The main conclusion which can be drawn from the empirical findings is that three variables: price index, average wages and labour productivity, form a multi-dimensional equilibrium space. This property of the described phenomena needs to be taken into serious account when building macroeconometric models explaining the behaviour of the Polish economy. The existence of these three cointegration vectors is troublesome because of unusual problems of interpretation. However, if it is not as a result of misspecification and/or small sample bias, it proves that much remains to be learned about the price-wage mechanisms functioning in economies having a mixed character.     

Neonatal death following clozapine self-poisoning in late pregnancy: an unusual case report

The report presents a fatal poisoning of a neonate occurring in the final stage of gestational life and evoked by his mother, who, while 9 months pregnant, took a toxic dose of clozapine aiming at committing suicide. She was also severely poisoned, but ultimately was saved. The woman had been taking the medication due to schizophrenia and depression prior to conception, and the discontinuation of the drug in the course of pregnancy increased the risk of the woman attempting suicide. In the course of comprehensive toxicological analysis based on the developed analytical procedure with the use of LC-APCI-MS, clozapine and its two metabolites, norclozapine and clozapine-N-oxide, were determined in postmortem blood, liver and kidney in concentrations explaining the death of the neonate. The interpretation of the above-described case is complex and--apart from toxicological aspects--also involves issues associated with psychiatry, pharmacotherapy in pregnancy and medicolegal problems.     

Exchange rate, inflation and unemployment in East European economies: the case of Poland and Hungary*

The aim of the paper is to model the impact of exchange rate on both inflation and unemployment variables in economies which are characterized by important structural changes, i.e. a transition phase moving from centralized economies towards market economies. This phenomenon, which is common to the East European countries, stressed different effects both for what concerns the behaviour of economic agents and for what concerns fiscal and monetary measures adopted by governments and aiming to keep under control the inflation–unemployment trade off. Time series relationships between these variables are investigated within an econometric model. Economic theory and the available data on the hypothetically relevant variables, along with the consideration of the main facts occurred in the period under study, characterize our information set. It is found that single equation analysis yields inefficient inference relative to the whole system analysis, and important structural changes are detected which reflect possible breaks in the structure of the economic system along with a change in economic policy.     

试论司法鉴定的独立性 --以清末"杨乃武与小白菜案"为例

该文通过对清末"杨乃武与小白菜案"这一中国法历史上经典案例的个案分析,阐释了司法鉴定独立性原则的基础理论,并对我国现今司法鉴定制度的体系构建发表了看法.     

试论司法鉴定的独立性 --以清末"杨乃武与小白菜案"为例

该文通过对清末“杨乃武与小白菜案”这一中国法历史上经典案例的个案分析，阐释了司法鉴定独立性原则的基础理论，并对我国现今司法鉴定制度的体系构建发表了看法。