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This article investigates the location determinants of firms with foreign capital participation within Poland using the regional data set from 1993 to 1998. It is found that the concentration of foreign economic activity is positively related to industry and service agglomeration and the road network and negatively to the unemployment rate. Traditional regional characteristics such as GDP, wage rate and education, often regarded as important location determinants, are not robust with respect to the specification of the estimating equation. The special economic zone variable is not found to be statistically significant in any specification estimated. Geographic location dummies confirm that foreign firms prefer Central and South-Western regions over Eastern parts of Poland having controlled for their characteristics.

This paper investigates the importance of border effects for the location of foreign firms within Poland using a regional data set for the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies the border effects are estimated for individual neighbouring countries that belong to two groups: EU member countries and EU non-accessing countries. It is shown that border dummies for three EU non-accessing countries: Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are negative and statistically significant. These results suggest that regions located along the Polish segment of the Eastern frontier of the enlarged European Union are less attractive to foreign investors compared to other Polish regions, having controlled for their economic and social characteristics. This finding has important implications for the conduct of regional policy as public aid or special economic status may be necessary for these disadvantaged regions to prevent uneven regional growth and widening of development disparities within Poland. Copyright (c) 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

The EU-sponsored Barcelona conference in 1995 set the ambitious goal of creating the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area (EUROMED) that would include the European Union and the MENA countries by 2010. The intermediate steps towards building the EUROMED have involved bilateral "vertical" trade liberalization between the EU and the particular MENA countries as well as "horizontal" trade liberalization among themselves. In this paper we evaluate empirically the effects of the new EU Association Agreements with the MENA countries using the augmented gravity equations derived from a variety of neoclassical and new trade theory models and panel data for the period 1980-2004. We find that while these agreements increased significantly imports of the MENA countries from the EU they had no positive impact on their exports to the EU which can be attributed to the asymmetry in trade liberalization between the EU and the MENA countries.

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Cieślik A. and Kaniewska M. (2004) Telecommunications infrastructure and regional economic development: the case of Poland, Regional Studies38, 713-725. We develop a theoretical model that establishes a link between telecommunications infrastructure and the regional level of income. This relationship is subsequently tested using Polish regional panel data for the 1990s. The empirical results confirm that there exists a positive and statistically significant causal relationship between telecommunications infrastructure and income at the regional level. With causality running from telecommunications to income, telecommunications policy should be viewed as an important part of regional policy aimed at reducing spatial income disparities in Poland. We can expect that EU enlargement and the harmonization of Polish telecommunication law with EU regulations should contribute to more even regional development in Poland. Cieślik A. et Kaniewska M. (2004) Infrastructure des telecommunications et le developpement economique regional: etude de cas de la Pologne, Regional Studies38, 713-725. Cet article cherche a developper un modele theoretique qui etablit un lien entre l'infrastructure des telecommunications et le niveau des revenus regionaux. Par la suite, on teste ce rapport employant des donnees regionales polonaises par echantillon permanent pour les annees 1990. Les resultats empiriques confirment l'existence d'une correlation etroite et statistiquement importante entre l'infrastructure des telecommunications et le revenu regional. Etant donne que la causalite va des telecommunications au revenu, une politique en faveur des telecommunications devrait etre consideree comme partie integrante d'une politique regionale destinee a reduire les ecarts des revenus regionaux en Pologne. L'elargissement de l'Ue et l'harmonisation de la loi polonaise sur les telecommunications, conjointement avec la reglementation de l'Ue, devraient contribuer a un reequilibrage du developpement economique regional en Pologne. Cieślik A. und Kaniewska M. (2004) Telekommunikationsinfrastruktur und regionalwirtschaftliche Entwicklung: der Fall Polen, Regional Studies38, 713-725. Die Entwicklung eines theoretischen Modells dient dazu, eine Verbindung zwischen Telekommunikationsinfrastruktur und regionaler Einkommenshohe herzustellen. Diese Beziehung wird anschliessend mit Hilfe polnischer Regionaldatenlisten fur die neunziger Jahre gepruft. Die empirschen Daten bestatigen, dass eine auf Regionalebene positive und statistisch signifikante Kausalbeziehung zwischen Telekommunikationsinfrastruktur und Einkommen besteht. Angesichts der von Telekommunkatione ausgehenden und sich auf Einkommen auswirkenden Kausalitat liegt es nahe, die Kommunkationspolitik als wichtigen Bestandteil der Regionalpolitik anzusehen, doch Ziel es sein sollte, raumliche Einkommensunterschiede in Polen abzuschwachen. Es ist erwarten, dass die Erweiterung der EU und die Harmonisierung des polnischen Telekommunkationsgesetzes mit den Bestimmungen der EU zu einer gleichmassigeren Re...

The goal of this paper is to study empirically the determinants of foreign firms' location in Polish regions with a special focus on the role of firm size. To derive testable hypotheses on the firm location choice an analytical framework that combines the firm heterogeneity and the new economic geography literatures is used. In this framework, agglomeration economies, technical infrastructure, and labour market characteristics may affect location decisions of foreign investors. The hypotheses derived from the theory are validated empirically using the regional dataset at NUTS 2 level of spatial aggregation for the period 1999-2010. The empirical evidence confirms the existence of firm heterogeneity with respect to the determinants of firm location choice.

In the last two decades, Poland became an important recipient of foreign direct investment most of which comes from the developed West European countries. This study uses panel data analysis to empirically examine the determinants of multinational activity of firms from the OECD member states in Poland during the period 1996-2015. The model's estimated empirical specification is based on the modified knowledge-capital model of the multinational enterprise that includes two types of capital: human and physical. Our empirical evidence points to the vertical motive as the primary reason for undertaking foreign direct investment in Poland by multinational firms based in the OECD member states.