Sustainability of municipal finance implies steady revenue generation. Pinpointing their determinants creates the necessary background in their management and policy creation. Great municipal dependence on central government finance remains a serious challenge in the process of fiscal decentralisation. So far, studies have been focusing on the expenditure side, while revenues were treated mostly marginally. A random-effects Generalized Least Squares (GLS) panel regression for the period of 2015–2019 is estimated for targeting revenue determinants of municipalities in North Macedonia. Own and total tax revenues are modelled separately through the impact of capital expenditures, salary expenditures, active transparency index, municipality type, and local government’s ideology. The general results indicate that capital expenditure, municipal transparency, and the level of development are significant determinants of municipal revenues in both estimated models. Using such knowledge on municipal revenue reactions can help governments formulate policies that provide sustainable and effective fiscal decentralisation, lowering the pressure on central governments in developing economies.
The right to the city is being able to co-decide about the city by its inhabitants. It can be implemented by means of urban participation that consists of two elements – a formal framework created by municipal authorities that enables city residents to join decision-making processes as well as readiness and willingness of the inhabitants to engage in such processes. In recent years, we have witnessed a “participation boom” that manifests itself through an increasing number of public consultations. In this context, the aim of the article is to describe the category of urban participation and offer a critical analysis of participatory processes and their determinants. At the same time, it should be emphasised that the article is theoretical in nature, and the analysed factors determining participation should be treated as a set of the author’s hypotheses that require empirical verification.
The aim of this article is to analyze the odds to find a job and the assessment of the duration of long-term unemployment. The data base is the 2007–2011 records from the Local Labour Office in Sulęcin. The authors of the article make the hypothesis that the impact of the determinants on the odds and rate of finding a job by the long-term unemployed is the same as in the case of the all the unemployed. The authors present a thesis that the determinants of long-term unemployment in the period of study are: the place of residence, age, the level of education, gender, seniority and the year of leaving the register. To analyze the data they use such nonlinear regression models as: the logistic model and the Cox hazard model. The former enables them to compare the odds to leave unemployment and the latter – to assess the time spent on finding employment. The designated odds ratios and hazard ratios are used to study the differences between subgroups of individual characteristics of the long-term unemployed as compared with all the unemployed.
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.
In the article, we analyse the reactions of large Polish cities (over 100,000 inhabitants) to the (re)centralisation pressure of the central government in 2015–2023. Referring to the developed typology of these reactions, we attempt to measure the intensity of contestation on the part of cities and determine the variables that build the potential for expressing such contestation. As measures of contestation, we use three variables: the city mayor’s participation in the Self-Government Movement “Yes! For Poland”, the adoption of a local in vitro programme and the presence of a roundabout, square, or street named after Women’s Rights in the city. The independent variables were the city’s size and wealth, the city mayor’s political affiliation, and the local electorate’s political preferences. The study showed that the city’s size and its citizens’ political preferences are the factors most strongly associated with the tendency to engage in conflictual behaviour towards government policies.
Academic research indicates that total or current expenditures have been most commonly used in sub-central or local government’s efficiency analysis as dependent variables, and a proxy for the cost of service provision. Our research applied in the case of Polish districts for 2019 and 2020 indicates two important results: firstly, regardless of whether total or current expenditures have been used, the determinants indicate the same direction of impact, and, secondly, the COVID-19 pandemic did not change the direction of the impact. The regression results confirm the positive direction that the administrative, educational, protection, and safety variables have on dependent variables.
The article deals with determinants of efficient absorption of European Union`s structural funds by local authorities entities. It focuses on factors connected with civil society that distinguish different regions. As it was broadly recognized and explored, the "basis of civil society is the social capital of a region. Social capital includes networks and relationships between people that transmit their shared attitudes and values and therefore influences on structures of common initiatives undertaken by individuals and different groups
in order to fulfill local societies` needs. The author studies to what extent social capital of different regions conditioned by cultural factors influences institutional efficiency of local authorities in Poland in relation to absorption of pre-accession fund SAPARD.
Local governments in the Western Balkan countries are dependent on central governments’ transfers, with low fiscal autonomy and limited efforts for own-source revenue mobilisation. The paper identifies that besides central government transfers, other significant factors in determining municipal own-source revenues include central and local public investment, current expenditures, human development index, and population density. Municipal own-source revenue is adversely affected by intergovernmental transfers, implying their de-incentivising effect in collecting local revenues. Local capital expenditure is a significant and strong determinant with a higher strength than central government investments, suggesting their importance for local fiscal autonomy. The human development index as a composite measure, unlike GDP per capita, positively affects the municipal fiscal autonomy.
The article analyzes the problem of delays in the preparation of local spatial development plans in Polish communes. Data from the annual survey sent to local governments and carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology and the Statistics Poland were used. On this basis, the categories of communes in which there is highly possible to identify occurring of planning works prolongation (referred to in the article as delays in drawing up plans), as well as its reasons, were identified. No territorial differentiation in this scope was found. The basic differentiation is related to the population of communes, i.e. the larger the commune in this respect, the greater the delays are. The interviews obtained from 16 communes (at 68 over 50,000 inhabitants, where the highest number of delays in preparing plans was identified) show that the main reasons for delays include problems related to public consultations and arrangements of draft plans, changing legal regulations, and staff shortages in commune offices. The article shows how these issues are related to the broader problems of the Polish spatial planning system. Further research directions were also proposed.
The article studies determinants influencing the socially-vulnerable population of Ukraine in the period of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The research encompasses three directions: first, the study of the current number of socially vulnerable groups of the population within the boundaries of the Carpathian area; second, the study and analysis of the determinants influencing the number of socially-vulnerable groups of the population; third, the investigation of the degree of the determinants’ impact on the number of the socially-vulnerable population within the Carpathian area. The authors of the work have shaped five groups of determinants influencing socially-vulnerable population, namely national, administrative, economic, demographic, and social ones. The research confirms that before the war started in Ukraine, the number of socially-vulnerable population had been reducing both in the country and within the Carpathian area. In particular, in 2001–2021, the number of vulnerable groups of the population reduced by 23% in Ukraine, in the Chernivtsi region – by 24.5%, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region – by 10%, in the Transcarpathian region – by 8.6%, and in the Lviv region – by 6.1%. The situation has changed since the war started. Based on the conducted calculations, it is determined that the greatest impact on the socially-vulnerable population is created by the national and economic determinants, whilst the smallest one – by the demographic determinants, whereas the last ones depend on the geographic position of the region. It is also confirmed by calculations of the radar of determinants influencing socially-vulnerable population. During the Russo-Ukrainian War, the greatest impact of the determinants on socially-vulnerable population is marked in the Lviv region.
The paper presents the evaluation of Cohesion Policy impacts on diffusion of development processes from cities to their regional hinterlands. We evaluated two things: a) the indicators illustrating metropolitan and regional concentration of population, enterprises, employers, and local governments revenues, and b) the impact of EU funds on the development of municipalities located in the surroundings of large cities (based on local governments survey results). For the first type of analysis, we delimitated the regional surroundings into two zones: metropolitan area and regional hinterlands (the former was only applicable in case of capital cities of voivodships). The outcome of the analysis in this dimension indicates a lack of any significant impact of Cohesion Policy on agglomeration processes in the analyzed spatial scales. However, the studies in the second dimension allow us to identify the thematic categories of public intervention that have the largest relative impact on spread effects from developing large cities to their regional surroundings.
Neither the history nor the theory of economics indicates unambiguously the sources of high yet stable economic growth. The aim of this paper is a thorough assessment of various growth determinants in German Bundesländer in the years 1991-2009 in terms of both current levels and recent developments. In order to evaluate the economic growth potential the summary index (SG) encompassing various dimensions of economy has been constructed and carefully calculated. Such an approach gives a holistic and comprehensive view on economic growth factors, encompassing business and political dimensions prevailing in the media and a scientific approach drawing on a specific methodology. Our results confirm to some extent earlier studies pointing to existing West-East discrepancies in Germany. However, one must not ignore achievements of the new Bundesländer as measured by positive time developments. Conceptual framework put forward shall be seen as scaffolding, at the same time synthesizing and differentiating various growth determinants, a possible “navigation tool” for other case studies.
The objective of this paper is to assess the advance of planning works in the area of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. The authors determined the degree to which districts were covered by local land development plans at the end of 2007. The assessment was done on the basis of plans which were carried out and those that still await implementation. In the assessment, we used one essential indicator of the demanded covering, which accounted for use intensity and the amount of existing functions.
The scale and structure of EU funds are one of the key determinants of Cohesion Policy impacts on socio-economic regional development, along with the magnitude of the Keynesian multiplier mechanism, spill-over elasticities, initial stocks of infrastructure, or human and physical capital. The aim of the paper is to analyze how changes in forecasts of Cohesion Policy public financial resources (available in NDPs & NSRFs) affect a counterfactual analysis of the Cohesion Policy impacts on the Polish NUTS-2 regional economies. On the basis of the financial data from the Polish Ministry of Infrastructure and Development which were made available in the years 2008?2013, simulations were carried out for the period 2004?2020 using 16 macroeconomic HERMIN models for the Polish regions. The results show that yearly forecast errors of the EU funds at the regional level account for up to 229%, and the forecast errors of allocations of the EU funds amount even to 32%. The inaccuracy of the forecasts of the EU payments and their volatility considerably distort the results of macroeconomic research of the Cohesion Policy impacts on development processes – even by 88% in the case of the yearly results, and by 49% in the case of cumulative results.
The purpose of the paper was to study the nature of demand for labour on the basis of the characteristics of unemployed people registered in the Local Labour Office in Szczecin that have found employment in the last quarter of 2006. In the paper, the authors studies the possibilities to use survival analysis methods for analysing the influence of gender, education and age of the unemployed person on their job search time and interactions between these variables. In the last quarter of 2006, Szczecin’s labour market demanded young and well-educated employees. The women tended to find jobs faster among younger groups, men among the older age groups.
The aim of this article is to gain a better understanding of the patterns of human capital mobility in transition economies. It exploits a unique dataset from a Polish social networking website to develop a typology of skilled migration. Determinants of human capital flows are further elaborated using an empirical model of student and graduate migration. It is found that spatial mobility of human capital in Poland is low, and the distance between the home region and potential destination plays the most significant role in migration decisions. Migrations of skilled individuals favour metropolitan areas, which experience a net gain of human capital, while all other regions are subject to brain drain.
Self-government-owned properties, and especially local ones, are primarily owned by urban and urban-rural communities. Many of them constitute municipal real estate resources and serve the collective needs of both members of the local community and visiting outsiders. These properties need constant budget expenditures (both current and asset-related). Some of them generate income that is a small percentage of total municipal budget revenues. However, the income from their sale can be much higher if the local authority decide to sell it and someone wants to buy it. The interests of both sides do not meet often enough. Not all municipal properties are for sale, and those that are do not always meet buyers’ needs. Very often the value of a property is different in the owner’s and the potential buyer’s opinion. The purpose of the study is to answer the following questions: 1) Do municipal properties have market value and does their sale price reflect their value?, 2) What are the determinants of municipal property price and for what reasons do local authorities decide to sell them?, 3) Are all municipal properties equally attractive to buyers?, 4) What revenues has the sale of municipal real estate generated for municipal budgets in the recent years?
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.
Horizontal transfers in the local government financial equalization system have been raising a lot of controversies in Poland during the last few years. The paper shows similar instruments functioning in other European countries: Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The paper discusses two mechanisms of equalization: that of revenue and of expenditure needs. European experience is discussed in a way which makes it possible to draw comparisons with regulations in Poland as well as with current debates in Poland.
The article seeks to identify socio-economic conditions that affect the demand of individual consumers for cars and to analyze spatial differences in these conditions. To achieve this objective, econometric modelling is conducted. The analysis was conducted in all poviats in Poland and covered the years 2010-2015. The findings show that the demand for new cars is stimulated by incomes of potential consumers and by a net in-migration, while the level of unemployment together with prices of complementary goods (especially petrol prices) negatively affect the demand for cars. Moreover, geographically weighted regression shows that the identified conditions differ across the country, which may explain the noticeable differences in the level of motorization between poviats.
Tourism is often treated as a solution for all development problems of every Polish local government. However, even the most popular tourism resorts do not always take the economic advantage of it. The economic impact of tourism is often lower that it could have been expected. The case study given in the article is Mikolajki – the most popular tourism resort in Mazury region, but very common as far as local government’s revenues are concerned. Why? This article gives at least a partial response for the question.
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.
The paper is an attempt to answer few questions, which are of crucial importance for the assessment of local government financing in Poland. The main focus of the paper is on inter-governmental financial transfers. What are goals and principles of inter-governmental grants in the theory of fiscal federalism? How these principles are applied in European countries? How the practice of local finance in Poland is related to these principles and to international experience? The first section deals with theoretical issues of grants` transfers and equalization schemes. The second part includes a brief description of grant systems in selected European countries. The third section concentrates on the evaluation of the Polish practice, and includes recommendation fo future changes. However, the paper skips a detail description of the Polish grant system (which is well-known and described in Polish academic literature).
The aim of this article is to identify the role of fees and user charges in the budgets of large cities (cities with county status) and policies of these entities in this regard. To achieve this goal, the article reviews the research on the importance of fees and user charges in local government finance, and analyses the role of fees and user charges in large cities finances in Poland from 2006 to 2012. The study confirms the global trend observable in different countries, i.e. the increasing importance of revenues from fees and user charges to local government budgets. Secondly, the relative size of revenues from fees and user charges in large cities in Poland are evening out. Thirdly, there are two key areas in terms of service charges: public transport and housing management.
The study aimed to examine the determinants of car choice in daily trips of the inhabitants of four Polish cities: Białystok, Gdańsk, Kraków, and Warszawa. Data from the Eurostat’s Quality of Life 2019 study was used to achieve this goal. The results of the empirical exercise revealed that the main factors affecting travel mode choice included the respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics. The perceived satisfaction with air quality, the city’s noise level, and public transport quality were found among the important predictors of car choice. The homogeneity of travel mode preferences at the city level was also analysed.
The article concentrates on vehicle tax, which is interesting not only due to its efficiency, but also high mobility of the tax base. The study aims to examine the correlation between fiscal results and municipal policies, from the perspective of such criteria as the type of municipality and taxpayer category. The study is based on correlation analysis, in which Pearson’s independence test and Spearman’s rho coefficient are used. The results confirm that the tested correlations do exist. Municipal tax policy influences tax revenues of the studied tax, though the results in each unit are different between the current and later periods. Moreover, in the case of vehicle tax, municipal authorities’ main action was to lower the upper tax rates. For municipalities in which these relations were the most visible, econometric models were built. These illustrate the effects of tax policy in relation to certain taxpayer categories.
The aim of our research is to evaluate the level of economic independence and its influence on political system changes in different groups of local government. The research shows that the decisive factor in differentiating economic independence of local governments is the level of urbanization. In urban self-government, its own revenues surpass 50% and sometimes even 60%, whereas in rural areas (defined as rural communes and land districts) they reach about 30%. Such marked differences can cause local governments to develop in two structurally different directions.
The paper analyses the changes in the scale of the rural economic activity and identifies their selected determinants. The socio-demographic characteristics of the labour resources and the economic differences between rural regions in Poland were analysed as reasons for the dissimilar levels of rural employment. Analyses have demonstrated that, in 2010–2016, rural economic activity measured by the employment rate increased from 50% to 53%, primarily as a result of the impact of cyclical determinants, reflected in the increase in the number of the employed being higher than the number of inactive persons, with a reduced scale of unemployment overall. The studies indicated similar values of the employment rate for urban and rural areas, while the differences in its level within the selected social categories were much more visible for rural populations. This reflected a persistence of territorial disparities in labour markets as well as a trend towards their convergence. The level of territorial differences in the rural employment in Poland was moderate and should be linked with regional economic characteristics. In this context, the allocation of rural labour supply could be attributed to the impact of cities and their functional areas and to the progress in economic diversification of villages located in a particular region. The discussion section of the paper outlines the institutional opportunities and barriers increasing rural economic activity. The presented conclusions were based on the Central Statistical Office data (mainly the Labour Force Survey and the Local Data Bank) and statistical and comparative analysis methods.
Discounts and rebates in local taxation are a very media-friendly topic, yet the opinions on the stimulating function of taxation are not supported by meaningful research. The article presents the impact of local governments’ decisions regarding reductions in the tax on means of transport on the location of entities subject to such a tax within the community. The article has a multi-dimensional character, as it is impossible to limit oneself to researching a simplistic relation between tax rates and the number of registered payers of the tax. One must consider additional factors, e.g. the location of new tax payers within a community will also indirectly impact estate taxes, CIT revenues, even the additional revenues from the personal income tax paid by employees. Therefore, it is vital to approach the consequences of local government decisions relating to changes in transport taxation multi-dimensionally.
Strengthening economic cohesion of regional economies is usually considered as one of the major goals of regional policy. At the same time, metropolitan cities are recognized as main centres of economic growth, influencing the development perspectives of more peripheral areas. It is therefore important to know the range and the mechanism of spillover of socio-economic development from metropolises to their surroundings, as well as to identify the areas which are economically lagging as a result of missing functional links with metropolises. The authors apply the local spatial correlation measures (local Moran’s statistics – LISA) in the analysis of municipal revenues in order to delimit the diffusion and polarization of economic development in Poland.
The subject of the paper is the discussion on horizontal redistribution of public revenues among local self-government units. The assumed aim of this redistribution is to equalize the different levels of income and burden of expenditure. The paper lists desirable features of this redistribution, motives for its application, and arguments of its opponents. The analysis of the latter shows that while part of the criticism refers to the essence of horizontal redistribution, significantly more of it concerns the dysfunctions of its mechanism which became apparent after 2008. The criticism focuses, for example, on the criteria for making compensatory payments, the structure of tax revenue indices, the so-called reference period, the amounts of compensatory payments, the criteria for the distribution of the collected amounts. The paper includes suggestions concerning recommended directions of changes in the mechanism of this redistribution.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the activity of local governments’ planning and investment service in the environmentally valuable areas of Podlaskie Voivodeship. Spatial planning at the local level is extremely important, especially in the environmentally valuable areas. It makes it possible to preserve the natural environment for future generations and to maintain ecological processes. However, protective measures should not disturb municipal investments. One of the appropriate solutions is the introduction of local land development plans – a framework of rational management of natural resources and of marketing development. This is particularly important in the areas of municipalities which, beside ecological functions, play an important role in the development of tourism and transport, and are situated in suburban areas.
The author of this article describes residential segregation of foreigners in Barcelona. She presents some theoretical considerations, makes statistical calculations pertaining to the problem, and defines causal factors of residential segregation. What is important, residential segregation in Barcelona may be far deeper than in other cities because of the relatively strong separatism in Catalonia and the required knowledge of the Catalan language. These factors make full access to local labour market very difficult for immigrants and lead to their marginalization. In the statistical calculations a measure of residential segregation (Duncan, Duncan 1955) is used which allows a comparison of the situation in Barcelona and in other cities, as well as an analysis of changes in Barcelona in recent years.
The main objective of this paper is to discover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and regulatory conditions of doing business on economic growth of different economies, particularly in terms of the combined co-effect of the two mentioned factors. An econometric cluster model using the k-means method is developed. 172 economies were distributed between clusters based on three parameters: 1) rates of GDP growth for individual economies in 2020, as provided by the World Bank; 2) the World Bank Doing Business rating for 2020; and 3) the COVID-19 pandemic factor that is represented by the total accumulated number of cases officially fixed per 100,000 of population, as provided by the World Health Organization. The study proves that the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be a substantial factor of economic growth for the vast majority of economies, which is reflected by the drop in their GDP even despite favourable conditions of doing business in some countries. Substantial compensating reciprocal influences are observed between the set of doing business factors and the COVID-19 pandemic factor.
