Abstract. Due to the complexity of relationships between innovations and income inequalities, the choice of measures to be taken in the course of their interaction is very important. This paper presents a regression analysis based on the selected measures of innovativeness (gross domestic expenditure on R&D, number of patent applications, the Creative Economy Index), income inequalities (Gini coefficient, top 3% and top 1% shares of national equalized income) and various control variables retrieved mostly from the Eurostat Database for 30 countries (European Union countries, Iceland, Norway) for the study period of 2005-2014. It has been found that higher gross domestic expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP tends to increase inequalities, while higher number of patent applications and higher value of the Creative Economy Index have the opposite effect. Besides, top income inequality is partly driven by different factors than broader measures of income inequalities.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We are indebted to two referees for exceptionally thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions, to Peter Rosendorff for advice and guidance, and to Jan Acedanski and Marcin Jakubek for valuable help. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractDrawing on the premise that the integration of economies revises people's social space and their comparators, we quantify social stress by aggregate relative deprivation, ARD; we calculate the effect of monetary mergers on ARD; and we document the validity of the superadditivity property of ARD for successive adoptions of a common currency by European countries. One feature of monetary unification, which replaces diverse currencies with a common currency, is that it brings about a change in the comparison environment, expanding the reference space of individuals in a given country to encompass individuals from the joining countries. Overall, calculations regarding six enlargements of the Economic and Monetary Union between 1999 and 2011 reveal an increase of ARD on six occasions when we hold incomes constant, and on five when we take into consideration changes in incomes. In addition, we observe an uneven distribution of the costs and benefits from monetary integration among the participating countries when these costs and benefits are measured in terms of ARD.JEL classification: D31; D63; E42; E44; F33; P51

The concept of nonneutrality of money is one of the most controversial concepts in the economic theory. Existing theories demonstrate that money is neutral (purely monetary phenomena do not yield real outcomes), but they are based upon assumptions that are unacceptable from the point of view of the complexity of social reality. Rejection of the assumption that the only motive of economic activity is to maximize wealth allows to notice a variety of social, cultural and psychological factors influencing the social meaning and use of money which could be introduced into socioeconomic models of monetary phenomena. The aim of this paper is to discuss some results of sociological research linked to the concept of nonneutrality of money. The emphasis is put mostly on the role of individual attitudes toward money. The novelty of this paper consists in linking the concepts of relative deprivation and nonneutrality of money under monetary integration.

Inflation expectations, both their median and dispersion, are of great importance to the effectiveness of monetary policy. The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of the global financial crisis on dispersion of inflation expectations in the European Union. Using European Commission’s survey data, we find that in the early phase of the crisis the dispersion dropped rapidly but then, after Lehman Brothers’ collapse, the trend reversed and these fluctuations cannot be explained by movements of inflation rates and other commonly used factors. We also observe that, in the new European Union member states, the initial drop of the dispersion was weaker whereas the subsequent rise was stronger as compared to the old member states.

Mainstream economics tends to perceive economic systems in a mechanistic way, which makes it impossible to grasp the notion of the irreversibility of real economic process­es and thus encourages referring to the achievements of thermodynamics.Although economic equivalents of thermodynamic quantities have been discussed for more than a hundred years, a sig­nificant development of thermodynamic techniques of modeling economic phenomena, that could complement standard econometric methods, has not been observed.It seems that a comparative analysis of the course of thermodynamic and business cycles could enhance the understand­ing of the mechanisms underlying business cycles, especially in the context of mutual rela­tions between economy and its environment.The aim of this article is to discuss some simi­larities and differences between economic and thermodynamic systems (heat engines and heat pumps). In particular, the problem of performing positive or negative work by an economy is considered and illustrated by the analysis of statistical data referring to the American and Polish economies.