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The paper aims to provide a characteristic of disparities between planned and executed local government revenues and expenditures in Poland between 2001 and 2011. Therefore, the article presents errors of the budget forecasting in the local governments in Poland in this period as well as their determinants. First and foremost, the author analyzes the literature in the field of the budget forecasting in the public sector, showing some constraints of this process. Furthermore, the paper examines the reports of the Ministry of Finance in Poland concerning local government budgets after the first quarter (plan of revenues and expenditures) and their execution after the year for the period 2001-2011. Thus, the empirical study conducted by the author characterizes measures of forecast errors of revenues and expenditures of local governments in Poland. Therefore, this research may be helpful in order to determine variables which affect the execution of the local budgets and contribute to construct budget projections more precisely. In consequence, the improvement of the accuracy of the budget forecasting in local government may lead to the better realization of the public tasks in the community. The type of the article: Empirical study.

The purpose of the paper is to present the development of the municipal bond market in Poland between 1989 and 2012, a characteristic of municipal bonds and their types, issued in this period. The empirical research conducted by the author provides some main financial indicators that determine the development of this market and its role for local governments in Poland. Moreover, there are analysed the types of investors on this market, organizers of the placements or the meaning of this market against the background of the municipal bond markets in the European Union (EU) countries. The study is mainly based on the miscellaneous reports and statistics of the National Bank of Poland, Ministry of Finance, Central Statistical Office of Poland, Warsaw Stock Exchange or rating agency Fitch Polska. An important source of information was also the research conducted by the author, which concerned the perspective of servicing the local governments by commercial banks and the associated risk. As a consequence, the author indicates that the value of municipal bonds issued in Poland is still relatively low in comparison with its gross domestic product and the leading EU countries. Therefore, there are possibilities of the further growth of this market in Poland. First and foremost, municipal bonds are positively perceived as an investment instrument by the investors, i.e. mainly commercial banks. Besides, these securities have a small share in the investment portfolio of pension funds and investment funds. However, one of the main obstacles of the further development of the municipal bond market in Poland is its relatively low liquidity.

This paper attempts to identify the financial indicators differentiating companies that are insolvent or at risk of insolvency and have successfully entered into an arrangement with their creditors from those that have not. In addition, a two-factor model for predicting the odds of an arrangement has been proposed. The research was conducted using a population of companies listed on stock exchanges in Warsaw that initiated restructuring proceedings between October 2004 and 31 December 2020. Binary logistic regression was used as the research method. The research shows that the financial health of public companies in Poland, as measured by various financial indicators, has little impact on the effectiveness of a debtor–creditor arrangement. The main measure showing discriminatory features between groups of successful and unsuccessful entities is the share of short-term liabilities in total liabilities. A statistically significant influence was also recorded for the indicator showing the share of short-term receivables in the total assets. Furthermore, a statistically significant discriminatory power for both groups was recorded for the indicator showing the ratio of inventories to sales revenue. However, in this situation the selection of this measure was due to the industry diversity of the research population. The identification of these determinants and the proposed model may help courts and supervisors to divide insolvent companies into those that should be subject to liquidation or restructuring procedures at an early stage of the proceedings. Consequently, this can significantly reduce the direct and indirect costs of implementing bankruptcy proceedings.