Andrzej Cieślik

Regional characteristics and the location of foreign firms within Poland

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.

Bilateral trade volumes, the gravity equation and factor proportions

The gravity equation has been widely used in studying the determinants of bilateral trade flows. Despite their dubious theoretical foundations gravity models have been extremely successful empirically. All theoretical attempts to provide a formal justification for the gravity equation assume complete specialization in production. This leads to a misleading impression that complete specialization is a necessary condition for deriving the gravity equation. In this paper we demonstrate formally that the gravity equation can be derived also from a variety of incomplete specialization models based on both neoclassical and monopolistic competition assumptions. The common prediction that emerges from these models is that factor proportion variables, along with the country size variables, play a key role in determination of bilateral trade volumes, however, their impact is model specific. The neglect of these variables in empirical studies employing gravity equations derived from complete specialization models might result in estimates that suffer from the omitted variable bias if trading partners differ in terms of their relative factor endowments.

External Openness and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between two channels of external openness: international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and the rate of economic growth implied by the leader–follower model. The predictions of the theory are tested for the group of 97 developing countries in the period of 1974–2006 using static and dynamic panel data estimation methods. The estimation results show that both international trade and FDI positively contribute to growth.

Measuring the trade effects of the euro in Central and Eastern Europe

We study trade effects of the euro adoption in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We employ a gravity model that controls for an extended set of trade theory and policy variables. The gravity model is estimated using the panel data approach on a sample of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and CEE countries trading with the rest of the world during the period 1993–2008. We find that the adoption of the euro results in trade expansion for the CEE countries. This result is driven by elimination of exchange rate volatility and accession to the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). However, our forecasts show that this effect is short-lived.

Characterising Japanese Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe: A Firm Level Investigation of Stylised Facts and Investment Characteristics

This article analyses the activities of Japanese investors in Central and Eastern Europe since the beginning of the regions transition. The use of firm level data on Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region allows us to focus on the industry, location and timing of affiliate establishment at a level of detail previously unexamined. This enables us to compare Japanese investment with overall regional inward investment as well as investigate country specialisation patterns within the region. We also characterise the type of investing parent, and determine how investments in CEE fit into the European-wide investment patterns for these firms. Finally, we investigate the entry mode choices of investing firms, finding a shift from minority-owned joint ventures and limited participation in the region in favour of wholly-owned subsidiaries and larger involvement in the region.

The Influence of Firm Characteristics and Export Performance in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparisons of Visegrad, Baltic and Caucasus States

In this paper we study the firm-level determinants of export performancein three groups of countries: the Visegrad, Baltic and Caucasus countries. Our analytical framework refers to the most recent strand in the new trade theory literature based on the Melitz (2003) model that stresses the importance of firm productivity in entering the export markets. The empirical implementation of the theoretical framework is based on the probit model and the BEEPS data set. Our empirical results confirm the importance of firm characteristics for export performance in the CEE countries. Also heterogeneity between different country groups within the region has been reported. Export competitiveness of firms from the CEE countries can be improved through the development of modern educational systems allowing to accelerate the accumulation of human capital. The financial support to research and development and innovation activities should also have a positive impact on the export performance of firms from the CEE countries. We take into account labor productivity and other firm characteristics that may affect export performance such as the age and the size of the firm, the use of human capital , and the degree of firm internationalization.

Multinational Firms, International Knowledge Flows, and Dual Labor Markets in Developing Economies

This paper seeks to explain how the expansion of multinational firms in a developing economy affects its labor market variables, such as wages in indigenous firms, the average wage level and total employment. Three potential effects: the transfer of foreign knowledge and the associated technological change, diffusion of this knowledge among indigenous firms, and the inflow of the physical capital from abroad, are examined under two possible scenarios: fixed and unlimited labor supply. The results obtained depend on the organization of the labor market in the host country, differences in capital intensity between multinational and local sectors, the amount of physical capital transferred to the host country from abroad, as well as the magnitude of knowledge spillovers stemming from multinational activity to indigenous firms. The predictions of the model are more consistent with empirical observations reported in empirical studies than those of other theoretical studies existing in the literature.

Privatization, Convergence, and Growth: Evidence for Transition Economies

In this paper, the authors study the empirical relationship between privatization, income convergence, and economic growth using the open economy versions of two competing growth models. The predictions of the theory are tested empirically for transition countries using static and dynamic panel data estimation techniques. The results for privatization are robust with respect to the estimation method used and reveal that only small-scale privatization is positively associated with growth. The evidence for external openness is mixed and depends on the estimation method employed and the presence of individual time effects for particular years of the sample. In most specifications, the authors document the presence of the income convergence effect. This implies that privatization and external openness have only temporary effects on the rate of growth in transition countries.

The Effectiveness of Preferential Trade Liberalization in Central and Eastern Europe

After the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), many countries in the region radically liberalized their foreign trade regimes in the 1990s. In particular, preferential trade liberalization in the CEE countries has been promoted by the European Union in the form of the association agreements that involved “vertical” trade liberalization between the EU and countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to this, the CEE countries liberalized trade “horizontally” among themselves in the form of sub-regional and bilateral free trade agreements. In this article, we use the generalized gravity equation, estimated on bilateral trade data for ten CEE countries during the period of 1993–2004, to evaluate the effectiveness of preferential trade liberalization in Central and Eastern Europe. We find that all forms of preferential trade liberalization positively contributed to the expansion of trade of the CEE countries, but their impact was country-specific.

On the Evolution of Corruption Patterns in the Post-Communist Countries

In this paper, we study the evolution of corruption patterns in 27 post-communist countries during the period 1996-2012 using the Control of Corruption Index and the corruption category Markov transition probability matrix. This method allows us to generate the long-run distribution of corruption among the post-communist countries. Our empirical findings suggest that corruption in the post-communist countries is a very persistent phenomenon that does not change much over time. Several theoretical explanations for such a result are provided.