The aim of this article is to supplement the Law and Economics area of science with regard to the scope of the ex ante effectiveness of bankruptcy law using the example of Poland. Bankruptcy law is effective in the ex ante stage when it eliminates from the market insolvent entrepreneurs who cannot even afford to cover the costs of bankruptcy proceedings. In these cases, the bankruptcy court should dismiss the petition for bankruptcy because of “poverty” of the insolvent estate. As a result, the insolvent debtor should be liquidated and deleted from the register of companies. This paper investigates entities whose bankruptcy petition has been rejected due to “poverty” of the insolvent estate. The study shows that, after the filing has been dismissed, the majority of these entities are not liquidated. To determine who is responsible for this state of affairs, the article identifies the stakeholders at the time that applications are filed for bankruptcy proceedings and also after the bankruptcy petition has been rejected. The article highlights stakeholders' diverging interests, strengths, and weaknesses to assess their potential impact on bankruptcy procedures that should be dismissed due to “poverty” of the insolvent estate.

The importance of services and the international trade in services is growing systematically. There are some reasons for that, especially the rapid development of IT technologies. This increase in the international trade in services is a global phenomenon, however there are some other specific issues, other than economic or technological, which might influence the trade in services in particular countries. As for the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe such a factor could be the accession to the European Union (EU). The objective of the paper is to analyse the export specialization of the Visegrad countries in the international trade in services and how it changed over seven years after the EU accession. The service sector comprises of a variety of highly heterogeneous economic activities and the diversity of services is also reflected in the international trade of particular countries. Generally, the trade theories deal with trade of goods, but there are some attempts already to apply these theories for services. To find out the export specialization based on the comparative advantage in particular services, the main categories of services are analysed based on the adjusted RCA index assumptions. The analysis prepared in the paper is based on the balance of payment statistics provided by the WTO. The article is concluded by discussing the questions about the export specialization of particular countries and how it changed after the accession to the EU.

Research background: Innovations are introduced by competitive companies. One of the most common methods, increasingly used by companies, is organizing clusters or cluster initiatives operating within a specialized sector, competing with each other, exploiting the potential of cooperation and its impact on creating new business ideas. However, these efforts could be unviable due to the lack of an effective leader of the group. One should underline a crucial role of the leader in such an organized network, since the leader makes improvements and takes initiatives for all the network and its partners. These concepts prompt us to undertake the research on the role of clusters? characteristics on enhancing willingness to innovate in general. This study aims to point out the main characteristics of clusters and to investigate their impact on companies? innovativeness. The main problem to address is the magnitude of specific effects that might boost introducing new solutions in firms? networks. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of factors describing cluster environment (characteristics like cooperation within clusters and beyond them, incentives of a leader, and localization factors) that might affect the innovativeness of companies. Methods: The authors collected data using questionnaire. This type of primary source enables the authors to construct a model consisting of latent variables such as incentives of coordinator of cluster or cluster initiative, cooperation of firms with local authorities, cooperation between entrepreneurs, or localization. The results are subject to the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis. Findings & value added: The conducted analysis leads to several findings. Firstly, incentives provided by the cluster coordinator enable companies to increase the willingness to introduce innovations in general. Secondly, however, the influence of other cluster characteristics on the propensity to innovate for firms functioning within specific Polish business clusters is scant. These findings point to the fact that actions leading to assign the official coordinator of a cluster need to be done, as it should result in better flow of knowledge, more symmetric information among companies within cluster, and more productive and innovative way of functioning firms in general. Regarding innovation clusters (and regional innovation systems), these actions need to be supported by forming policy on regional level, because effective clusters would induce more competitive regional economy in long-term scenario.

Nierówności regionalne a wzrost gospodarczy -weryfikacja hipotezy odwróconego U Williamsona / Regional inequalities vs. economic growth − testing Williamson's inverted U-curve hypothesis Krzysztof Kluza: Wpływ wzrostu stóp procentowych na ryzyko kredytowe jednostek samorządu terytorialnego / Effect of higher interest rates on credit risk of local government units ..

No abstract