The aim of the paper is to analyse the socioeconomic development of selected European countries represented by various social policies, and to verify the hypothesis of different speeds of development within the groups into which these countries divide. The following groups are considered in the analysis: Post-Communist countries (the Visegrad Group countries, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Estonia); Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden); so-called welfare states and "Old Europe" countries (Germany, France, Spain and Italy along with Great Britain and Portugal); and "small but affluent" countries: (Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands). For the measurement, a modified HDI index is employed, based on a number of sources, including the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) assessment and the EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index). The period of analysis covers the years 2006-2015. The analysis shows that GDP dynamics of Post-Communist countries is significantly higher than the other countries' dynamics. Dynamics of social development measured by HDI is also more rapid compared to the other groups. However, dynamics measured by the modified HDI does not give a clear indication. Affluent and large European countries are not those with the most prominent socioeconomic development. Speaking the language of physics, these countries have a big momentum, equal to the product of mass and speed, compared to other European countries.

This paper discusses the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment and the results obtained by students of the Wroclaw University of Economics. Special emphasis was placed on mathematics. Polish students obtained much better results in the latest PISA edition in maths, science and reading when compared to previous editions and to the average results calculated for the OECD countries. Despite this fact the scores of Polish students in the Creative Problem Solving test were much worse than the average for the OECD countries. It is worth noting that the Polish education system has been undergoing dynamic changes which are correlated with political changes and with the increase of social need for participating in decision-making in the education of the young generations. Unfortunately, the pressure to achieve good results in exams means that teachers have started to teach test solving instead of problem solving. This was also shown in the edition of the PISA exam. The authors of the article propose to change the structure of the didactic process, especially at universities, in a way that would make it possible to increase the number of exercises and laboratory hours.

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The paper presents the approaches to time in the theory of economics, and some problems resulting from the manner in which a time variable is used when describing and predicting economic events.