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Uptade from 2.03.2021: Parts of this article were subsequently used in the following publication: Swianiewicz, P., & Brzóska, A. (2020). Demand Elasticity for Local Public Transport in Polish Cities: Do Local Policies Matter?. Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences, 16(61), 125-142

After 1990, the number of local public transport passengers has been systematically decreasing at the expense of individual transport, which led to an increase in traffic congestion and deterioration of air quality in cities. However, for the last few years, a reversal of this trend has been observed in some cities. The article, using the data on the present number and recent changes in the number of passengers in nearly 100 Polish cities, discusses regression models to explain the factors influencing the diversity of demand for public transport services and its dynamics. The independent variables of the model refer both to the characteristics of cities (their socio-economic environment) and the organisation of services (e.g. organisational and legal forms of local transport companies, tariff policies, etc.). The results show that the density of the public transport network is the most significant factor explaining variation of the demand, while the level of ticket prices is almost insignificant. Demand in the largest cities has also recently been on the increase, but the relationship between the demand and the population size of the city is not a linear one.

The ecological activity of municipalities can be a very important element increasing their attractiveness. Modern digital technologies offer intelligent solutions and help fulfil many economic and social demands related to environmental issues. The study primarily looked at the degree of activity of municipalities in the implementation of optional ecological projects and revealed a low level of participation of municipalities in cross-border projects. A questionnaire survey was designed as a universal tool for studying digital maturity in a cyclical, low-cost manner, which provides extensive information by verifying various areas of municipal activity and then formulating conclusions for climate and regional policies, etc. On the one hand, the study fostered the need to implement ecological projects, especially of a cross-border nature, and on the other hand, it disseminated knowledge and indicated various possible solutions.

Empirical literature in the field of regional resilience has most commonly concentrated on a unique economic shock. However, the existing studies have fallen short of comparing the resilience patterns across different crises. The purpose of this study is to investigate the geographical persistence of regional resilience across different recessionary shocks, namely: 1) the 2008–2010 Global Financial Crisis; 2) the 2011–2013 Sovereign Debt Crisis; 3) the 2019–2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The study covers 202 European Nuts II regions. It applied a range of empirical tools such as Markovian Transition Probability Matrices, Global Moran’s and Local Moran’s, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, Kendal’s tau, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient, as well as illustrative maps. As an outcome, several important conclusions are reached. First, the spatial pattern of resilience is not stable/persistent over time, as the three recessions tend to hit different places at different crisis times. Second, in general, Southern European regions are the most consistently fragile/vulnerable regions. Third, spatial patterns of resilience are weakly correlated across the different recessions. From the policy standpoint, it is understood that dealing with employment resilience is more difficult than previously thought by the policymakers. Since the resilience pattern is not stable spatially, each crisis should be evaluated separately and no generic policy rules can be formulated to foster the resilience. Thus, one can understand that although the sources of the crises are different, there may be some geographies that are structurally suffering the recessions which necessitate a consideration of the reasons and the formulation of the related policies.

This article focuses on the problems of the Ukrainian economy and its regional labour markets in the context of full-scale war. The main challenges to regional development in the short and long term are identified, and the critical trends in the social stability and labour supply and demand in the regions of Ukraine in the prewar period and during the war are characterized. The authors analyse the level of balance in regional labour markets and identify the main risks and threats to their functioning and development in the context of destabilization processes. The article outlines the prospects and priorities of the state policy of stabilizing the functioning and ensuring the development of regional labour markets in Ukraine.

Nowadays, the development of local communities is hindered by crises, external shocks, and disturbance. Under such circumstances, an important characteristic is their resilience, i.e. the ability to withstand negative external influences and ensure further growth. Border communities are particularly sensitive to external stresses stemming from geopolitical and economic changes. The article aims to identify key determinants and indicators of territorial community resilience in the EU-Ukraine cross-border area. The methodological foundations of the research comprise the main provision of economic theory, regional development, and spatial economy theory, etc. The methods of comparative, economic, and statistical analysis are used in the study of various dimensions of community resilience. The main results of the study of the peculiarities of socioeconomic development of Ukraine’s border communities and existing opportunities for the use of instruments of cross-border cooperation derive from a sociological survey based on the expert opinion method.

This paper aims to explain the organisation and functioning of local governance based on the legal infrastructure of Kosovo and the efforts of its institutions to accommodate international pressure under the existing legal infrastructure, which was specifically created according to international law and international demands. Kosovo has implemented asymmetric decentralisation, through which new special municipalities have been created for minorities, with a specific emphasis on the Serb minority. This was undertaken with the aim of integrating minorities into Kosovo’s constitutional-political system; this objective has been realised quite well, with the exception of four municipalities in the north of Kosovo. All minorities are well integrated, including the Serb minority living in the south of Kosovo. However, pressure for the creation of an Association of Serb Municipalities continues, despite the request for such an association violating Kosovo’s system and constitution, which were created in line with international law and international demands. After elaborating on the Kosovo system, this study will explain certain agreements that, had they been non-ambiguous, would have helped and strengthened Kosovo’s constitutional and political system. A combined methodology, followed by legal, historical, and teleological analyses, supported the authors in achieving the study’s.

The purpose of this study is to identify the determinants of innovation of enterprises in the Regional Innovation System context. We analyse factors that determine regional innovation in a less developed region, taking the Podkarpackie region in Poland as our empirical counterpart. We examine how the EU economic policy instruments influence the innovation of enterprises within the context of the Regional Innovation Systems. We propose a model for the implementation of innovations and test our hypotheses based on the data drawn from the period of 2011–2014. The paper provides insights on a rather successful story from Poland. We posit that enterprises use only specific public policy instruments and that companies’ demand for innovation-supporting instruments changes, reacting to the business cycle phase and to financial incentives.

The article contains a regional analysis of the Ukrainian labour market risks and its minimisation recommendations in the war period. The war’s consequences were the forced migration spread, the labour force reduction, the unemployment increase, and the decline in real incomes. The analysis of regional disproportions of labour market risks during the war showed that jobs declined, wages decreased, labour supply-demand imbalance and labour competition increased in the regions with the most consequences of military actions. The migration, unemployment, and wages trend became a base for developing the labour markets advantages matrix for Ukraine’s regions.

In the paper, we calculate Okun’s coefficients in the regions of Poland. We compare the coefficients estimated for each region separately with the calculations obtained from seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models. The results reveal that the latter method gives better estimates, because shocks in output are highly correlated across regions. Then, we consider the question concerning the existence of macroeconomic “clubs” among Polish regions. Two such clubs are found: the northwest of Poland and the eastern border region. Finally, some conclusions concerning economic policy preventing unemployment are drawn.

Several theories of regional development (e.g. new economic geography) claim positive relationship between administrative status of capital cities and their economic and population growth. Availability of capital goods as well as direct and indirect demand generated by administrative institutions are among factors which accelerate development. However, most of empirical studies so far have concentrated either on national capitals or on federal states. In our article we conduct empirical tests comparing the impact of reforms implemented in 1975 and 1999 in Poland on the development of cities gaining or losing their regional capital functions. On the basis of those results the article indicates differences in impacts of both reforms and attempts to explain those differences.

The author attempts to determine the size, structure and diversification of the economic base of towns and cities in the Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodship, as well as their evolution in the years 2008-2015. An additional objective is to determine the relationship between the level of economic growth of the examined units and the state of their economic base. The obtained results confirm the hypothesis that the economic sector is not a significant part of total employment in the surveyed units. At the same time, the exogenous employment structure is poorly diversified, and in the period under study it decreased even further, exposing local economies to external shocks. There is also a positive, although weak effect of the increase in local specialization on the level of revenue in local self-government units and on their level of unemployment.

This article determines the effect of crisis changes on the structure of household expenditures in the following different regions of Ukraine: Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Vinnytsia. The study covers the period before the full-scale Russian invasion (2017–2022) and after its onset (2022–2024). We analysed the data through correlation analysis and the Cobb–Douglas consumption function model to determine the structure of expenditures depending on two factors: the cost of housing rental and consumer goods prices. Before the full-scale invasion, we observed a stable positive correlation in most cities between the cost of housing and prices of goods, with changes in one indicator being reflected in the other. After the invasion began in the affected regions (Kharkiv and Odesa), the correlation between prices of goods and the cost of housing rental changed from positive to negative. In the regions that were less affected (Lviv, Vinnytsia, and Kyiv), the correlation remained or grew stronger due to increased demand. This article therefore contributes to understanding consumer behaviour in times of crisis.