We use a unique firm-level survey dataset that draws from the EFIGE (European Firms In Global Economy) questionnaire, to unveil differences in factors driving export performance in structurally most diverse areas of Poland. While conventional results about the role of size, foreign ownership and innovation activity are confirmed at the aggregate level, the picture breaks down when Western and Eastern macroregions are extracted.Our results suggest that the common perception of a more developed West (Poland "A") and a backward East (Poland "B") might be outdated. Rather, firms in both regions seem to follow distinct strategies and have dissimilar success factors for competing internationally. Interestingly, export performance in the East is found to benefit from family ties in business, but also product innovation and non-price competitiveness. In the West, it is in turn associated mostly with size and foreign ownership. Overall, our results on the one hand add support to the 'New' new trade theory and 'New' new economic geography's premises related to the importance of microeconomic factors and, on the other, shed a new light on the pattern of regional development in Poland. We also discuss some implications for policy makers and managers and suggest directions of further research.
The previous and latest crises confirmed that stability of external financing of the economy is determined not only by the volume of capital inflow but also by its structure. It is established that a bias in gross external liabilities towards debt, especially short-term, may rise vulnerability to financial crises. Greater share of equity capital, mainly direct investment is not found to bear such financial risk. The results of Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) show that influence of variables inherent in macroeconomic and portfolio approaches varies depending on the type of capital inflow and the group of countries. We also find some arguments that equity investment is a more desirable form of foreign capital because debt inflows are more responsive to global factors and therefore more volatile. As a word of caution, we highlight the need for diversification and careful monitoring of external financing sources and forms.
Based on the original and unique data collected from 1000 users of PANEK CarSharing in Poland (the biggest car sharing company in Warsaw), we explored the roles of social trust and social capital in stipulating the process of value co-creation, understood as the ability to share information (engage in dialogue) with other users and the system operator. Our results indicate that particular trust has a more positive influence on the dialogue between users and the operator than general trust. This means that the higher social capital that can be established among a relatively coherent group of people with similar interests and common goals is more important than the general trust arising from our assumption that all people can be trusted, even if we do not know them. Moreover, those customers who see a shared car as a substitute for private ownership as well as those who are more environmentally aware, reveal greater propensity to share information. An important incentive for information sharing is its positive influence on improving the quality of a car sharing system.
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