Employment in Poland 2007: Security on flexible labour market

This Report is a third in the series Employment in Poland. It consists of four Parts, devoted to empirical analysis of the impact of macroeconomic shocks on EU New Member States labour markets‘ in 1996-2006; utilization of flexible forms of employment on Polish labor market, determinants of wages and wage inequalities in Poland; effectiveness of ALMP in Poland, respectively. In Part I, we present how the cyclical upturn propagated on Polish labour market in 2003-2007 and how the performance of that market evolved relatively to other EU countries. Then we apply a panel SVECM to study propagation of macroeconomic shocks in eight CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004. We show that demand side shocks (foreign demand and labour demand shocks) were of foremost importance to unemployment and employment fluctuations in the region. At the same time, we argue that the wage shocks, thought of as wage rigidities, were important internal disturbances affecting the developments on the labour markets in the region. Part II is devoted to atypical forms of labour employment. We show that in all CEE countries the incidence of nonstandard employment arrangements is much lower than in Western Europe. Although Poland stands out in the whole EU with its dynamic spread of temporary employment and integration of temporary work agencies in the functioning of the labour market, in general the potential of atypical employment in Poland and other CEE is largely unfulfilled when it comes to work- life balance or supporting the economic activity of people who find it difficult to work full-time due to age or health reasons. In case of Poland, we study in more detailed way the legal, infrastructural and tax-related factors affecting the utilisation of nonstandard forms of employment. In Part III, we study wage developments in Poland from macro- and micro-perspective alike. We argue that wage growth in Poland exhibited a significant inertia during the transition period. We find that the concurrent rise of wage inequalities in Poland was due to the fact that rapid technological progress favoured some professional and social groups more than others. The increasing return on formal education and rising premiums on work in managerial positions as well as increasingly diverse individual and market characteristics of Polish workers seem to play the key role. The public sector stands out with higher wage compression than private sector. We show also that, in international comparison, the gender wage gap in Poland is relatively small. Notwithstanding the above, even if differences in individual and employer characteristics as well as working time are taken into consideration, women still earn about ten percent less than men. Part IV focuses active labour market policies (ALMP). We assess the ALMP spending and structure in Poland and we use the survey, conducted for the purposes of this Report, to study to effectiveness of ALMP. To our knowledge, it is the first attempt at producing a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of ALMP effectiveness in Poland in the recent years. Applying Propensity Score Matching, we find that intervention and public works turn out to be completely inefficient when it comes to enhancing employment chances of the unemployed. At the same time, even for those programs that are characterised by positive net efficiency, such as internships and traineeships, the deadweight loss is also high, i.e. support is extended to groups whose situation is relatively good, whereas more difficult cases are neglected. Thus, the placement of ALMP participants in Poland is sub-optimal, which partly reflects very poor job broking and counseling done by PES. We complete the report with policy implications

Employment in Poland 2007: Security on flexible labour market

This Report is a third in the series Employment in Poland. It consists of four Parts, devoted to empirical analysis of the impact of macroeconomic shocks on EU New Member States labour markets‘ in 1996-2006; utilization of flexible forms of employment on Polish labor market, determinants of wages and wage inequalities in Poland; effectiveness of ALMP in Poland, respectively. In Part I, we present how the cyclical upturn propagated on Polish labour market in 2003-2007 and how the performance of that market evolved relatively to other EU countries. Then we apply a panel SVECM to study propagation of macroeconomic shocks in eight CEE countries which joined the EU in 2004. We show that demand side shocks (foreign demand and labour demand shocks) were of foremost importance to unemployment and employment fluctuations in the region. At the same time, we argue that the wage shocks, thought of as wage rigidities, were important internal disturbances affecting the developments on the labour markets in the region. Part II is devoted to atypical forms of labour employment. We show that in all CEE countries the incidence of nonstandard employment arrangements is much lower than in Western Europe. Although Poland stands out in the whole EU with its dynamic spread of temporary employment and integration of temporary work agencies in the functioning of the labour market, in general the potential of atypical employment in Poland and other CEE is largely unfulfilled when it comes to work- life balance or supporting the economic activity of people who find it difficult to work full-time due to age or health reasons. In case of Poland, we study in more detailed way the legal, infrastructural and tax-related factors affecting the utilisation of nonstandard forms of employment. In Part III, we study wage developments in Poland from macro- and micro-perspective alike. We argue that wage growth in Poland exhibited a significant inertia during the transition period. We find that the concurrent rise of wage inequalities in Poland was due to the fact that rapid technological progress favoured some professional and social groups more than others. The increasing return on formal education and rising premiums on work in managerial positions as well as increasingly diverse individual and market characteristics of Polish workers seem to play the key role. The public sector stands out with higher wage compression than private sector. We show also that, in international comparison, the gender wage gap in Poland is relatively small. Notwithstanding the above, even if differences in individual and employer characteristics as well as working time are taken into consideration, women still earn about ten percent less than men. Part IV focuses active labour market policies (ALMP). We assess the ALMP spending and structure in Poland and we use the survey, conducted for the purposes of this Report, to study to effectiveness of ALMP. To our knowledge, it is the first attempt at producing a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of ALMP effectiveness in Poland in the recent years. Applying Propensity Score Matching, we find that intervention and public works turn out to be completely inefficient when it comes to enhancing employment chances of the unemployed. At the same time, even for those programs that are characterised by positive net efficiency, such as internships and traineeships, the deadweight loss is also high, i.e. support is extended to groups whose situation is relatively good, whereas more difficult cases are neglected. Thus, the placement of ALMP participants in Poland is sub-optimal, which partly reflects very poor job broking and counseling done by PES. We complete the report with policy implications.Poland; unemployment; employment; transition countries; labour market shocks; SVECM; wage rigidities; flexible forms of employment, wage inequalities, wage determinants, active labour market policy, ALMP effectiveness

Influence of the contractor’s payment method on the economic effectiveness of the construction project from the contractor’s point of view

The scope of the paper is the problem of the economic effectiveness of the construction project from the contractor’s point of view. The two main construction contract types are taken under consideration: the unit price contract based on the bill of quantities and the lump sum contract

Cost minimization of locating construction machinery park with the use of simulation and optimization algorithms

Every construction project requires a plan of construction site, where storage areas, temporary roads, social containers, machinery parks etc. are shown. The location of the machinery park on a building site is very important. Cost is the most important factor for both, civil engineering structures and buildings in terms of the machinery movement. The everyday building machinery transport from the park to the working positions is time and cost consuming. Four possible solution of the location of temporary roads, necessary for such transport of the construction machinery, were discussed. Finding the optimum location of machinery park was presented, and case study calculations were made. Two dimension problem simulation has been applied, enhanced by heuristic algorithms to solve the discussed matter

A framework for robust object multi-detection with a vote aggregation and a cascade filtering

This paper presents a framework designed for the multi-object detection purposes and adjusted for the application of product search on the market shelves. The framework uses a single feedback loop and a pattern resizing mechanism to demonstrate the top effectiveness of the state-of-the-art local features. A high detection rate with a low false detection chance can be achieved with use of only one pattern per object and no manual parameters adjustments. The method incorporates well known local features and a basic matching process to create a reliable voting space. Further steps comprise of metric transformations, graphical vote space representation, two-phase vote aggregation process and a cascade of verifying filters

Cash Flow Optimization for Renewable Energy Construction Projects with a New Approach to Critical Chain Scheduling

This study concerns the use of the critical chain method to schedule the construction of renewable energy facilities. The critical chain method is recognized as a useful project management tool, transforming a stochastic problem of uncertainty in activity durations into a deterministic one. However, this method has some shortcomings. There are no clear principles of grouping non-critical activities into feeding chains. Another ambiguity is sizing the feeding buffers with regard to the topology of the network model and the resulting dependencies between activities, located in different chains. As a result, it is often necessary to arbitrarily adjust the calculated sizes of feeding buffers before inserting them into the schedule. The authors present the new approach to sizing the time buffers in the schedule, enabling a quick assessment of the quality of a given solution variant and finding a solution that best meets the established criteria, conditions, and constraints. The essence of the presented approach is the two-step sizing of time buffers with the use of deterministic optimization and stochastic optimization techniques. Taking into account construction management needs, the optimization criteria are based on the construction project cash flow analysis. The effectiveness of the presented approach is illustrated by an example of developing a wind power plant construction schedule. According to the results, the presented approach ensures the protection of the scheduled completion date of the construction and the stability of the schedule

Alternative Method of Measuring Concentration

The most popular measure of concentration, Gini coefficient G, does not show uniformly all the changes taking place in a flow of goods between objects. This work presents alternative index of concentration IC that when used together with Gini index mitigate that inconvenience. Studies have shown that coefficient IC differs considerably from Gini index in sensitivity to flow of ”good”. The coefficient IC is more sensitive because it depends on value of change quadratically while Gini index only linearly. IC depends on coordinates more properly than G as it depends on difference in values of coordinates opposite to G which depends on difference in positions of coordinate

Widely tunable directional coupler filters with 1D photonic crystal

International audienceWe present two concept examples for adding a wide range tunability to Si/SiO/sub 2/ devices involving a photonic crystal element. They are based on a directional coupler filter of two different geometries, where one of the arms is a Bragg reflection waveguide (BRW) used for the bandwidth improvement. The tuning relies on changing the properties of the BRW core. As an illustration we consider the smectic A* liquid crystal as the core material and show that ca 100 nm tuning range is achievable by the core index variations of 0.006 under applying electric field of 5 V/μm