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The performance of the economy should generally reflect the performance of stock markets. Production increases, prices rise, and companies’ profits increase if the economy grows. And the shares should naturally make the profits (which means among other things, higher dividends) even more attractive. But is that really true? The aim of the article is to find out the relationship between the development of stock markets and the economic growth in Visegrad Group countries (V4). The subject of the survey is both the long-term relationship and the short-term relationship in the course of economic cycles. The article uses the tools of time series econometrics, especially VECMs, including corresponding diagnostics, Granger causality and block erogeneity. The relationships between the variables examined vary from country to country. The long-term relationship between the development of stock markets and the economic growth was confirmed in Slovakia and Hungary. It was confirmed that the GDP growth rate influenced the growth rate of stock indices in all V4 countries. The opposite relationship (the stock index growth rate influences the GDP growth rate) was not confirmed only in the Czech Republic. Quarterly data for the period from 2005/Q1 to 2018/Q4 was used for the analysis. This period was selected because all of the V4 countries have been members of the European Union since 2004. The EViews software version 9 was used for the calculations. Variables used in this research are: the GDP, the stock Exchange index of the country and stock trading volume. The PX, SAX, BUX and WIG20 stock indices are considered to be the crucial representatives of individual stock markets in this work.

Unemployment has a number of negative, economic, social and psychological effects on unemployed people and their families. Lowered household income leads to a constrained fulfilment of individual and collective needs, which has a significant impact on the quality of life and perceived health condition of the unemployed. The aim of this study is the identification of relationships between the quality of life and socio-economic status of unemployed persons. The study was carried out among 403 registered unemployed persons (246 women, 157 men) from Wrocław, Poland. The main method used in the study was the diagnostic questionnaire survey. Respondents’ quality of life was assessed using the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire, and their socio-economic status with author’s own S-ESQ questionnaire. Arithmetic means and standard deviation were calculated. Correlations between respondents’ quality of life and socio-economic status were checked with the Kruskal-Wallis oneway analysis of variance and Dunn’s post-hoc tests. The ex-ante level of statistical signifikance was set at α < 0.05. The mean health-related quality of life score of the unemployed respondents under study was higher than the mean perceived health condition score. As for the four quality of life domains, the respondents reported the highest scores in the social domain and psychological domain, followed by the physical and environmental domains. The analysis of mean scores of overall quality of life of the unemployed revealed statistically significant differences between groups of jobless Wrocław residents with regard to such factors as age, number of household members, and per capita income. Respondents’ age, education, marital status, persons per household, per capital income, and having savings were also significant differentiating factors of perceived health condition. The results of the study can be significant for public health policies in Poland and other countries at a similar level of economic development.

The paper is an analysis of foreign trade of the post-Soviet countries conducted for years 2000 and 2015. The aims of the research were thus twofold: to examine the bilateral trade scheme for the selected countries and to attempt to explore relations between competitiveness and thus the position of the agricultural commodity aggregates. The UN COMTRADE database was used. In the monitored countries, there is continuous growth of the commodity aggregate 0 – Food and live animals, which is strongly influenced by the commodity sub-aggregates 02 – Dairy products and bird eggs, S3-04 – Cereals and cereal preparations. The first phase entailed calculations of individual indicators of mutual trade (RCA, LFI, GLI and coverage of import). Subsequently, the indicators were used as input variables for further analyses. Using RCA and LFI indexes, the commodity aggregates were classified into 4 quadrants according to their position within the comparative advantage and competitiveness. Using a cluster analysis (based on Euclidian distance and Ward’s method), individual commodity aggregates for the monitored countries were divided into groups based on the values of GLI, LFI and coverage of import. The groups were subsequently characterized for individual countries. Based on the conducted analyses, it can be stated that hypothesis 0 about the non-existence of significant changes within the group structure does not reflect the reality. Between 2000 and 2015, substantial changes occurred in terms of dividing the commodity aggregates into groups based on their common characteristics with regard to foreign trade. In addition, the diversity within foreign trade decreased between 2000 and 2015, and more commodity aggregates attain values around or below the average of a given aggregate. When assessing the intraindustry trade, it can be stated that some commodity aggregates can be regarded as important only with regard to Azerbaijan, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. In these countries, this phenomenon is most frequently evident in the commodity aggregates Beverages or Vegetables and fruit.

In the contemporary economic reality, which is based on relations, the role of trust both in the intra- and inter-organisational context is growing in importance. Impersonal trust is characterized by considerable durability and forms a solid framework for developing interpersonal trust. In consequence, many researchers’ attention is drawn towards practices aimed at the development of such trust. The goal of the paper is to analyse potential relations between the degree of impersonal trust and innovative culture and, in particular, to operationalise the variables, i.e. determine the dimensions of impersonal trust and innovative culture, estimate the impact of the individual dimensions of the former onto those of the latter. The survey was conducted in Poland among 630 employees of large and mediumsized enterprises. Verification of the theoretical model was performed based on structural equation modeling. The research led to the identification of dependencies between the particular dimensions of impersonal trust and innovative culture, confirming the importance of impersonal trust in the process of shaping organisational culture. Impersonal trust was recognized as a separate construct which determines the nature of innovative culture. Feeling of security has special significance at workplace because guarantees stability, durability and openness in relations, enhances creativity of staff and gives them freedom to try non-conventional solutions to problems. Organisational assurance, i.e. a conviction about the clarity of rules and principles, open communication and making staff feel they are included in organisational processes, has a weaker impact on the dimensions of innovative culture when compared to feeling of security.

The objective of this study is to propose a trustworthy, valid and consistent methodological approach for measuring the efficiency of a logistics platform, where an entire country constitutes a logistic platform. Traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is found to be an appropriate tool – if its weaknesses are eliminated. DEA results are highly influenced by the choice of appropriate inputs and outputs variables, but the method itself does not provide guidance for their identification. The authors therefore propose to integrate traditional DEA by combining the Delphi technique with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, which will assist in identifying proper, consistent input/output variables, evaluated by their relevance. The proposed framework allows the performance evaluation of the selected platform’s element or elements. It is thus a useful decision support tool for enterprises (private, public, both) that are managing logistics platforms and trying to improve their productivity in order to sustain or improve their position on the competitive market. This methodology allows comparative efficiency analyses to be estimated for similar countries. The presented methodology on one hand enables tailor-made solutions, but on the other hand is very general, and, with minor adjustments, can be applied by a variety of firms and industries. It can be applied in private sector firms in production and service industries, to analyse the relative performance of diverse logistics and non-logistics services, and in public profit or non-profit organisations.