Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.

Originally published in the pre-EU-accession period, this E-Book edition of Doing Business with Poland has been updated to take account of the post-accession changes to the legal and fiscal environment. It remains a definitive appraisal of the economic and investment climate, including an examination of the legal structure and business regulation, information on the financial sector and unique best practice on all aspects of trading with and investing in Poland. The guide also provides an overview of key sectors of trade and investment.

What makes countries rich? What makes countries poor? Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland seeks to answer these questions, and many more, through a study of one of the biggest, and least heard about, economic success stories. Over the last twenty-five years Poland has transitioned from a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country to unexpectedly join the ranks of the world's high income countries. Europe's Growth Champion is about the lessons learned from Poland's remarkable experience, the conditions that keep countries poor, and the challenges that countries need to face in order to grow. It defines a new growth model that Poland and its Eastern European peers need to adopt to grow and catch up with their Western counterparts. Poland's economic rise emphasizes the importance of the fundamental sources of growth- institutions, culture, ideas, and leaders- in economic development. It demonstrates that a shift from an extractive society, where the few rule for the benefit of the few, to an inclusive society, where many rule for the benefit of many, can be the key to economic success. *IEurope's Growth Champion asserts that a newly emerged inclusive society will support further convergence of Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe with the West, and help to sustain the region's Golden Age. It also acknowledges the future challenges that Poland faces, and that moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes in Poland's developmental character.

The monograph summarizes a significant part of the results of the research project entitled “Foreign Trade in Special Economic Zones in Poland”, financed by the National Science Centre in Poland (project no. DEC-2013/11/D/HS4/04007). The project aimed at identifying the real impact of SEZs on Poland’s trade turnover. Its implementation focused on expanding the available scope of knowledge on the impact of the SEZs on the Poland’s trade and has enabled to join in the ongoing national and international academic debate on further functioning of various types of areas of special preference. Moreover, the research permitted for identification of microeconomic determinants of the impact of the SEZs on business entities in terms of their export activities contributing to a wideningof scientific achievements in the field of economics. Readers interested in further exports analyses of SEZs in Poland, are kindly asked to refer to https://nazarczuk.wordpress.com/hzwsse/ or https://www.researchgate.net/project/Foreign-Trade-in-Special-Economic-Zones-in-Poland, where the authors have published electronic versions of publications created within the project. On the above-mentioned websites, we also deposit electronic attachments to this book, which due to their volume and therefore lower readability, have been removed from the paper version of the book. The book covers unique approach to the analysis of foreign trade. It presents a macroeconomic, mesoeconomic and microeconomic perspective on the effects of special economic zones operation with regard to foreign trade to provide a better understanding of consequences of SEZs’ establishment (for country, region or a firm). To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first (so comprehensive) evaluation of SEZs functioning thereof.

In Eastern Europe privatization is now a mass phenomenon. The authors propose a model of it by means of an illustration from the example of Poland, which envisages the free provision of shares in formerly public undertakings to employees and consumers, and the provision of corporate finance from foreign intermediaries. One danger that emerges is that of bureaucratization. On the broader canvas, mass privatization implies the reform of the whole system, the creation of a suitable economic infrastructure for a market economy and the institutions of corporate governance. The authors point out the need for a delicate balance between evolution - which may be too slow - and design - which brings the risk of more government involvement than it is able to manage. A chapter originating as a European Bank working paper explores the banking implications of setting up a totally new financial sector with interlocking classes of assets. The economic effects merge into politics as the role of the state is investigated. Teachers and graduate students of public/private sector economies, East European affairs; advisers to bankers or commercial companies with Eastern European interests.

Much attention has been given to the role of intellectual dissidents, labor, and religion in the historic overthrow of communism in Poland during the 1980s. Books Are Weapons presents the first English-language study of that which connected them—the press. Siobhan Doucette provides a comprehensive examination of the Polish opposition’s independent, often underground, press and its crucial role in the events leading to the historic Round Table and popular elections of 1989. While other studies have emphasized the role that the Solidarity movement played in bringing about civil society in 1980-1981, Doucette instead argues that the independent press was the essential binding element in the establishment of a true civil society during the mid- to late 1980s. Based on a thorough investigation of underground publications and interviews with important activists of the period from 1976 to 1989, Doucette shows how the independent press, rooted in the long Polish tradition of well-organized resistance to foreign occupation, reshaped this tradition to embrace nonviolent civil resistance while creating a network that evolved from a small group of dissidents into a broad opposition movement with cross-national ties and millions of sympathizers. It was the galvanizing force in the resistance to communism and the rebuilding of Poland’s democratic society.