An Assessment of the Implementation of Performance Budgeting in Poland with Reference to the Experiences of Other Countries

Since the last global financial crisis, public expenditures have been experiencing increasing budget constraints. Therefore, public authorities search for solutions that would foster efficient and transparent expenditures at both the national and local government levels. One of the tools at their disposal is the performance-based budget, which is not, however, cheap or easy to implement. The aim of this paper is an assessment of the implementation of performance budgeting in Poland, and a formulation of proposals de lege ferenda. The assessment discusses selected aspects and conclusions which emerge from the experiences of other countries. The main thesis, set forth in the conclusion of this article, is that in many countries, including Poland, the implementation of a performance-based budget takes place at the national level, not at the local government level, which seems to be questionable, or even incorrectPo ostatnim globalnym kryzysie finansowym, wydatkowanie środków publicznych ma miejsce w warunkach coraz większych ograniczeń budżetowych. Władze publiczne poszukują więc rozwiązań sprzyjających efektywnemu, skutecznemu i przejrzystemu dokonywaniu wydatków, zarówno na szczeblu państwa jak i samorządu terytorialnego. Jednym z takich narzędzi jest budżet zadaniowy, który nie jest jednak rozwiązaniem tanim i łatwym w praktycznym wykorzystaniu. Celem rozważań jest ocena implementacji budżetowania zadaniowego w Polsce oraz sformułowanie propozycji de lege ferenda. W ocenie tej wykorzystano również wybrane aspekty i wnioski płynące z doświadczeń innych państw. Główną tezą postawioną w podsumowaniu jest wskazanie, iż niezbyt słusznie i trafnie, wdrażanie budżetu zadaniowego ma miejsce w wielu państwach, w tym również w Polsce, najpierw na szczeblu państwa, a nie samorządu terytorialnego

Biodiversity As An Ecological Safety Condition. The European Dimension

The main purpose of the paper is to indicate the theoretical bases of biodiversity protection from the perspective of the natural and economic sciences, and to describe the diversity of biodiversity protection levels in the EU states. A specific aim is to indicate the forms and instruments of nature conservation involved in biodiversity protection, and to carry out an overview of established nature conservation programmes in selected EU countries. In order to accomplish such a complex aim, this article presents an overview of literature found in the natural, economic and legal sciences and popular magazines presenting scientific research within the field of biodiversity. Then a comparative analysis is presented based on the statistical data coming from various international statistics resources (OECD, EUROSTAT, EEA)

Risk Assessment of Transitional Economies by Multivariate and Multicriteria Approaches

This article assesses country-risk of sixteen Central, Baltic and South-East European transition countries, for 2005 and 2007, using multivariate cluster analysis. It was aided by the appropriate ANOVA (analysis of variance) testing and the multicriteria PROMETHEE method. The combination of methods makes for more accurate and efficient country-risk assessment.Country risk classifications and ratings involve evaluating the performance of countries while considering their economic and socio-political characteristics. The purpose of the article is to classify, and then find the comparative position of each individual country in the group of analyzed countries, in order to find out to which extent development of market economy and democratic society has been achieved.Country-risk, Transition countries, Multivariate cluster analysis, PROMETHEE method.

Smart Specialization of Workforce Structure in the European Union Countries – Dynamic Analysis Applying Shift-Share Analysis Method

The performed research also allowed for the identification different kinds of workforce structure characterized by smart specialization (significant share of workforce in high-tech manufacturing sector or high-tech services sector) and the assessment of generated structural and competitive effects.Przeprowadzone badania pozwoliły na identyfikację różnych rodzajów struktur pracujących cechujących się inteligentną specjalizacją (znaczący udział pracujących w sektorze przemysłu wysokiej techniki lub usług opartych na wiedzy) oraz ocenić generowane przez nie efekty strukturalne i konkurencyjne

Cultural heritage and sustainable development targets : a possible harmonisation? Insights from the European Perspective

The Agenda 2030 includes a set of targets that need to be achieved by 2030. Although none of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focuses exclusively on cultural heritage, the resulting Agenda includes explicit reference to heritage in SDG 11.4 and indirect reference to other Goals. Achievement of international targets shall happen at local and national level, and therefore, it is crucial to understand how interventions on local heritage are monitored nationally, therefore feeding into the sustainable development framework. This paper is focused on gauging the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with reference to cultural heritage, by interrogating the current way of classifying it (and consequently monitoring). In fact, there is no common dataset associated with monitoring SDGs, and the field of heritage is extremely complex and diversified. The purpose for the paper is to understand if the taxonomy used by different national databases allows consistency in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. The European case study has been chosen as field of investigation, in order to pilot a methodology that can be expanded in further research. A cross‐comparison of a selected sample of publicly accessible national cultural heritage databases has been conducted. As a result, this study confirms the existence of general harmonisation of data towards the achievement of the SDGs with a broad agreement of the conceptualisation of cultural heritage with international frameworks, thus confirming that consistency exists in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. However, diverse challenges of achieving a consistent and coherent approach to integrating culture in sustainability remains problematic. The findings allow concluding that it could be possible to mainstream across different databases those indicators, which could lead to depicting the overall level of attainment of the Agenda 2030 targets on heritage. However, more research is needed in developing a robust correlation between national datasets and international targets

Towards the optimal Pixel size of dem for automatic mapping of landslide areas

Determining appropriate spatial resolution of digital elevation model (DEM) is a key step for effective landslide analysis based on remote sensing data. Several studies demonstrated that choosing the finest DEM resolution is not always the best solution. Various DEM resolutions can be applicable for diverse landslide applications. Thus, this study aims to assess the influence of special resolution on automatic landslide mapping. Pixel-based approach using parametric and non-parametric classification methods, namely feed forward neural network (FFNN) and maximum likelihood classification (ML), were applied in this study. Additionally, this allowed to determine the impact of used classification method for selection of DEM resolution. Landslide affected areas were mapped based on four DEMs generated at 1m, 2m, 5m and 10m spatial resolution from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data. The performance of the landslide mapping was then evaluated by applying landslide inventory map and computation of confusion matrix. The results of this study suggests that the finest scale of DEM is not always the best fit, however working at 1m DEM resolution on micro-topography scale, can show different results. The best performance was found at 5m DEM-resolution for FFNN and 1m DEM resolution for results. The best performance was found to be using 5m DEM-resolution for FFNN and 1m DEM resolution for ML classification

The impact of health on professionally active people's incomes in Poland. Microeconometric analysis

The outcome of the research confirms the occurrence of positive interaction between professionally active people's incomes and the self-assessed state of health. People declaring a bad state of health have incomes by 20% on average lower than people who enjoy good health (assuming that the remaining characteristics of the surveyed person are the same). In case of men, the impact of health state on incomes is slightly greater than in case of women.Wyniki badań potwierdzają istnienie pozytywnej zależności dochodów osób aktywnych zawodowo od stanu zdrowia mierzonego jego samooceną. Osoby deklarujące zły stan zdrowia osiągają dochody przeciętnie o 20% niższe niż osoby, które cieszą się dobrym stanem zdrowia (przy założeniu, że pozostałe charakterystyki badanej osoby są takie same). W przypadku mężczyzn zależność dochodów od stanu zdrowia jest nieznacznie silniejsza niż w przypadku kobiet

Introduction

Wstęp do Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Oeconomica nr 225Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 zostało dofinansowane ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk