The Lisbon Strategy: a Tool for Economic and Social Reforms in the Enlarged European Union

This paper evaluates achievements and shortcomings of the Lisbon Strategy launched by the European Union in the spring of 2000 aiming to increase the competitiveness of the European economy within ten years. A careful examination of the Strategy’s pros and cons shows that its general rationale was sound and helpful despite an incorrect and naive political call to economically outperform the rest of the world in such period. The main priorities of the Strategy: promoting growth through creating more and better jobs and developing the knowledge base of the economy, remain valid for today and for the future. However, it has to be underlined that implementing desired changes requires time. At the moment, it is crucial to accomplish structural reforms, which have significant impact on job creation, business performance and growth. Among them, it is essential to complete the Single Market, still limited by many administrative barriers. The paper shows main areas of necessary improvements to be undertaken by the Community and the member states. To strengthen real ownership of the Lisbon process, politicians must change their thinking from short-term and national to long-term and beneficial for the entire Community. Only such committed leadership can persuade the citizens to support the reforms, aiming to build a common European public good. Exploring these ideas would be a desirable return to the basic concept of the European Community, shaped by its founding fathers short after the World War II.European Union, Lisbon Strategy, achievements, shortcomings, open method of coordination, structural reforms, single market, services sector, ownership of reforms, public support

Numerical solution of fractional Sturm-Liouville equation in integral form

In this paper a fractional differential equation of the Euler-Lagrange / Sturm-Liouville type is considered. The fractional equation with derivatives of order $\alpha \in \left( 0,1 \right]$ in the finite time interval is transformed to the integral form. Next the numerical scheme is presented. In the final part of this paper examples of numerical solutions of this equation are shown. The convergence of the proposed method on the basis of numerical results is also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Deformations on Tilted Tori and Moduli Stabilisation at the Orbifold Point

We discuss deformations of orbifold singularities on tilted tori in the context of Type IIA orientifold model building with D6-branes on special Lagrangian cycles. Starting from $T^6/(\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2)$, we mod out an additional $\mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetry to describe phenomenologically appealing backgrounds and reduce to $\mathbb{Z}_3$ and $\Omega\mathcal{R}$ invariant orbits of deformations. While D6-branes carrying SO(2N) or USp(2N) gauge groups do not constrain deformations, D6-branes with U(N) gauge groups develop non-vanishing D-terms if they couple to previously singular, now deformed cycles. We present examples for both types of D6-branes, and in a three-generation Pati-Salam model on $T^6/(\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_6')$ we find that ten out of 15 twisted complex structure moduli are indeed stabilised at the orbifold point by the existence of the brane stacks.Comment: 49 pages; v2: minor text-typo corrections, references adde

Secondary Privatisation: The Evolution of Ownership Structures of Privatised Enterprises

This summary was prepared and edited by Barbara Blaszczyk and Richard Woodward of CASE - the Center for Social and Economic Research. In the project whose results are presented here, our team investigated the phenomenon of "secondary privatisation" (that is, the post-privatisation evolution of the ownership structures established as the result of initial privatisation) in three transition economies (the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia) in the years 1995-1999. Our research covered companies that were privatised under various privatisation schemes which established ownership structures whose nature was heavily determined by privatisation policy rather than market forces (including employee buyout programs and mass privatisation programs in which all citizens were given rights to acquire shares at prices significantly below market value). We present the post-privatisation changes in ownership structures of privatised companies and analyse the relationships between those changes and the economic performance of the companies. Much attention is also devoted to the role of the institutional environment. We hope that the results of this research will be useful for everyone interested in the little-researched question of what has happened to companies after privatisation in the transition countries.privatization, secondary transactions, corporate governance, transition economies, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland

Privatization and Company Restructuring in Poland

Privatization, Company Restructuring, Poland, transformation