Combating Adult Illiteracy in the People’s Republic of Poland (on the Example of Selected Documents of the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Combating Illiteracy in 1949–1951)

The subject of this article is combating adult illiteracy in the People’s Republic of Poland. The existing knowledge concerning the topic has been supplemented with the analysis of the archival documents, currently being in possession of the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw. It describes how illiterates were recognised in the society, in what way they were encour­aged to train new skills and how attending the courses was made possible for them. The analysed documents include censors’ reviews of manuals, press articles, letters wrote by former illiterates and other valuable records. The communists were combating illiteracy not only in the name of the social progress, but mostly motivated by their quest to broaden the possibilities of ideological indoctrination – during the courses organised for illiterates and later on. This is why the selection of manuals and other publications addressed to former illiterates was propagandist. The strategic importance of the matter was expressed by Vladimir Lenin himself: “Socialism cannot be built by illiterates” (W. Ozga, Educa­tion in the six-year-plan and the revolutionary changes of the society and economics in the People’s Republic of Poland, Warsaw 1951, p. 124)

Temporary Migration in Theories of International Mobility of Labour

There is an increasing awareness of an empirical relevance of temporary migration. This literature overview attempts to summarize the current state of knowledge about drivers and economic role of temporary migration. It sets together elements of relevant theories of initiation, perpetuation and return migration, international trade and conclusions from a growing body of empirical literature on returns, remittances and behaviour of immigrants in host economies, including labour markets. Distinguishing between permanent and temporary migration may help to explain not only the dynamics of the actual labour force movements but also to better describe their impact on source and host economies.temporary migration, migration theory, return migration, remittances

Search Equilibrium with Migration: the Case of Poland

The EU enlargement has facilitated labour force movements between the former EU member countries and the accession countries. Foremost, the outflow of workers from the new member countries to countries which introduced open-door policy has magnified. The aim of the paper is to shed some light on the possible effects of reinforced emigration from Poland on its labour market. In particular, it focuses on the impact of the migration flows on wages. The wage equation derived from the search and matching model augmented with migration flows (emigration and the return migration) was estimated employing Bayesian inference. It allowed calculating an approximate magnitude of emigration of workers and describing the impact the labour movements should have had on the real wage in Poland. From 2002 to 2006 the number of temporary emigrants increased by roughly 4.5% of the Polish population whereas the resulting increase in the real wage was moderate and amounted to over 1%. The implied elasticity of wages to reduction of the workforce due to emigration between 2003 and 2006 was in the range of 0.2–0.3. Mediocre response of wages to emigration corresponds well with earlier studies on the impact of emigration on the source country wage rate. Yet, the explanation of the limited impact of emigration on wages lies in the adjustment of the demand for labour in the steady-state and substantial intensity of the return migration predominantly to employment found in the data.emigration, integration, labour market, EU enlargement

Migration Flows and Labour Market in Poland

In the paper temporary migration flows are analyzed in conjunction with information on labour market gross flows. Gross migration flows were calculated on the base of the household survey that is conducted jointly with the LFS survey in Poland. The results indicate that the propensity to emigrate is higher for unemployed as compared with employed or non-participants. Moreover, after the EU accession these were employed and unemployed who experienced the most pronounced increase in the propensity to emigrate. The steadystate analysis of the gross labour market and migration flows delivers the estimate of the ratio of the temporary emigrants to the total population of Poland in the period 1994– 2006. The ratio rose sharply after the EU accession from around 2% in 2002 to roughly 6% in 2006. Although, higher intensity of migration movements is unlikely to considerably bias the labour market figures like the unemployment rate and the activity rate,it may still lead to notable biases in the estimates of the labour productivity if emigration trends are not properly accounted for in estimates of the LFS population data.emigration, labour market flows, labour market, EU enlargement

Non-accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment in Poland

The model of the wage bargaining constitutes a framework for calculation of the NAWRU in Poland. The approach used in the paper let me trace changes of the natural unemployment rate in Poland in the context of structural changes in the economy in the last decade. Moreover, I introduced the endogenous equilibrium rate into the existing macroeconomic model — ECMOD. It allowed me to simulate NAWRU behavior after economic shocks. Simulation results shed some light on channels and speed of adjustment of the modelled economy. Interestingly, when NAWRU is tied to the stock of capital, relative prices and fiscal variables, the model is able to replicate high degree of the unemployment persistence.equilibrium unemployment, NAWRU, macromodel, labour market

Direct Detection of Light Dark Matter and Solar Neutrinos via Color Center Production in Crystals

We propose a new low-threshold direct-detection concept for dark matter and for coherent nuclear scattering of solar neutrinos, based on the dissociation of atoms and subsequent creation of color center type defects within a lattice. The novelty in our approach lies in its ability to detect single defects in a macroscopic bulk of material. This class of experiments features ultra-low energy thresholds which allows for the probing of dark matter as light as $\mathcal{O}(10)$ MeV through nuclear scattering. Another feature of defect creation in crystals is directional information, which presents as a spectacular signal and a handle on background reduction in the form of daily modulation of the interaction rate. We discuss the envisioned setup and detection technique, as well as background reduction. We further calculate the expected rates for dark matter and solar neutrinos in two example crystals for which available data exists, demonstrating the prospective sensitivity of such experiments

Możliwości odtwarzania struktury genetycznej populacji na podstawie źródeł historycznych

Publikacja sfinansowana ze środków z zakresu działalności upowszechniającej naukę (DUN) Polskiej Akademii Nauk