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The transformation towards the Green Economy (GE) in Poland is a relatively new topic for researchers, policymakers and business practitioners. A comprehensive picture of the shift towards the GE can help mentioned groups translate theoretical assumptions into practice.

This chapter presents the assessment of Poland's shift towards the GE, measured by the proposed Green Transformation Index (GTI).

The set of GE indicators was elaborated in Structured Literature Review (SLR) variation method. Then, this set of indicators was compared with the Statistics Poland (GUS) secondary data and employed in the taxonometric calculation methods.

In the result, the GTI for the Polish economy was proposed and calculated between 2007 and 2020. The GTI allowed us to present a dynamic analysis of the transformation towards GE in Poland.

Poland generally has a homogeneous society, conservative towards changes and diversity. The corporate culture in Polish companies reflects this mindset, leading to a lack of inclusion on the corporate board. Additionally, many companies may not fully understand the benefits of an inclusive workplace and legal requirements for gender diversity.

The main objective of the study is to provide a better understanding of the attitude of Polish companies towards diversity policies and reveal differences in actual and expected levels of gender diversity in corporate boards. Thus, we examine compliance with the gender diversity guidelines in the corporate governance code.

Using a sample of 367 Polish companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, we study the composition of the management and supervisory boards to check if they meet the expected gender diversity criteria. We also look at companies' explanations for non-compliance with the main principles regarding diversity policy.

We find that the current composition of corporate boards of stock companies in Poland is male-dominated. Women represent only 12.72% and 17.12% of the management board and supervisory board members, respectively, and 68.94% (42.23%) of companies have no women on their management (supervisory) board. Moreover, only a small percentage of companies comply with the principles related to gender diversity. Qualifications, experience and education are pointed out as the most important criteria for decision-making on board appointments, with only 2% of companies applying gender as an additional criterion. The study suggests that larger companies are more likely to implement diversity policies.

The comparison between economic growth and the character of monetary policy is one of the most frequently studied issues in policymaking. However, the number of studies incorporating a dynamic time warping approach to analyse the similarity of macroeconomic variables is relatively small.

The study aims at assessing the mutual similarity among various variables representing the financial sector (including the monetary policy by the central bank) and the real sector (e.g. economic growth, industrial production, household consumption expenditure), as well as cross-similarity between both sectors.

The analysis is based on the dynamic time warping (DTW) method, which allows for capturing various dimensions of changes of considered variables. This method is almost non-existent in the literature to compare financial and economic time series. The application of this method constitutes the main area of value added of the research. The analysis includes five variables representing the financial sector and five from the real sector. The study covers four countries: Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Romania and the 2010–2022 period (quarterly data).

The results show that variables representing the financial sector, including those reflecting monetary policy, are weakly correlated with each other, whereas the variables representing the real economy have a solid mutual similarity. As regards individual variables, for example, GDP fluctuations show relatively substantial similarity to ROE fluctuations – especially in Czechia and Hungary. In the case of Hungary and Romania, CAR fluctuations are consistent with GDP fluctuations. In the case of Poland and Hungary, there is a relatively strong similarity between the economy's monetisation and economic growth. Comparing the individual countries, two clusters of countries can be identified. One cluster includes Poland and Czechia, while another covers Hungary and Romania.

Polish agriculture is one of the main sectors of the national economy that, under the influence of political transformations and European integration, is subject to measures stimulating its development. The instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have been an important supporting stimulus.

This chapter aims to evaluate the significance of the common agricultural policy to the growth and development of agriculture and to structural transformations therein triggered primarily by the influx of additional CAP funds.

The agricultural sector was examined together with its selected characteristics in the context of CAP instruments' impact after 2004. Data included the streams of funding for Polish agriculture and indicators illustrating changes in structural features, economic performance and productivity of production factors. The indicators included changes in the number, structure and potential of farmsteads, changes in the level of employment in agriculture, this sector's share in total gross value added, profitability of farmsteads, capital expenditure level and changes in labour and land profitability compared with changes in the level of employment and agricultural production intensity. They were calculated based on data from EUROSTAT, Statistics Poland and Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).

The outcomes confirm that common agricultural policy has contributed to create development processes in Polish agriculture. Changes in the sector affected structural characteristics, production factors productivity and the income of agricultural producers. Since Poland joined the European Union (EU), the percentage of agricultural workers declined by 8.4 p.p. and the number of farms decreased by nearly 30%. These changes were accompanied by a nearly twofold increase in agricultural labour productivity, 50% increase in land productivity and the profitability of land increased by 43%.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Polish economic situation was extremely difficult: high public debt, shortages, high inflation and more than 8,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) waiting to be restructured and/or privatised; along with a GDP per capita lower than in Ukraine.

This chapter provides an overview of the Polish economic transition, and presents the results of this process, taking into account four aspects of the changes, i.e. stabilisation, liberalisation, institutional reforms and privatisation. Special attention is paid to intentionally unfinished privatisation and the still significant role of state-owned enterprises, which have remained important economic agents.

Critical analyses were made of the literature dedicated to the economic transition and of the role and characteristics of state-owned enterprises. Empirical evidence is drawn from original datasets about the scale of SOEs in the contemporary economy and rotations in management and supervisory boards in Polish joint-stock companies.

Despite the unfavourable initial conditions, Poland soon emerged as a leader in economic growth, successfully stabilising, liberalising and privatising its economy. The institutional foundations of a democratic market economy were consistently built, and the applications for membership in the OECD, the EU and NATO were an important driver of institutional reforms. In terms of state institutions, political and economic freedom and quality of governance, Poland is more similar to the G7 countries than to the other post-socialist countries, though the need to maintain high-quality state institutions is still a priority. The significant share of SOE is regarded as a challenge of the Polish economy because state-owned enterprises are an object of rent-seeking by politicians and political parties.

Justice perceptions describe an individual's evaluation of whether decisions or actions are fair or unfair. These perceptions are important because they affect individual attitudes and behaviors in different situations. Family firms develop and implement governance policies and structures (i.e., governance systems) to diminish the problems that can arise from the overlap between the business, the family, and the ownership systems of a firm. Governance systems help family firms have a clear structure of accountability and a clear understanding of the rights and responsibilities that family and non-family members have toward the family enterprise. Research on governance to date has focused on the practices and policies that exist and their effects on the family firm. However, in the governance context, individual perceptions are important because they are likely to affect the attitudes that family and other members have toward the family enterprise and the likelihood that they will follow the different policies when they are implemented. This chapter takes a receiver perspective to explain how individuals create justice perceptions based on governance mechanisms and the effects of these perceptions. The goal is to understand how we can use this information when developing governance practices in family firms.

Fiscal and monetary policies are essential to the development of a capital market. In this chapter, authors present how fiscal and monetary policy in Poland evolved and adjusted to economic challenges in 1998–2022. It is worth noticing that the Polish economy and financial market have been built from scratch after 45 years of socialism. Hence, it is scientifically interesting to study the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy, and capital market in a developing country, and in a relatively young economy.

Both – the macroeconomic policy mix and development of the capital market – are the subject of analysis how fiscal and monetary policy impacted the capital market. As so the main aim of the chapter is the assessment of the nexus and dependencies between fiscal and monetary policy and the capital market.

In the chapter, multiple linear regression was used for each dependent variable to discover which monetary and fiscal policy parameters significantly predicted selected variables describing the development of the capital market in Poland. Fiscal and monetary policy variables served as descriptors explaining capital market parameters in seven separate models.

Multiple regression models explain 77.3%–95.4% of the volatility of the capital market characteristics. The level of the central bank's reference rate is a variable that influences the capital market the most. In six out of seven models, the interest rate was a significant parameter. The development of the capital market was accompanied by a higher tax-to-GDP ratio. At the same time, a strong negative impact of the tax-to-GDP increase was noticed in domestic institutional investors' stock trading.

EU countries, including those in Central and Eastern Europe, seem to have increasingly similar economies, allowing for the study of real convergence as a process of equalising income levels (measured by GDP per capita). Studies of income convergence in the European Union also have a regional dimension and often focus on convergence at the NUTS2 or NUTS3 regional level. The level of development and income in Polish regions differ significantly. The regional policy implemented at the national and EU level focuses on reducing these differences.

The main aim of the chapter is to analyse the income convergence process among regions in Poland and verify the effectiveness of regional policy implemented at the national and EU level.

The study uses Barro type regression for panel data, log t convergence test, and club clustering algorithm introduced by Phillips and Sul to identify patterns of club convergence in Polish regions. The data used for the study is the Local Data Bank provided by Statistics Poland, which includes gross domestic product per capita at the NUTS-3 level for 73 Polish regions over the period of 2000–2020.

The results of the study indicate a very weak convergence process for all Polish NUTS-3 regions and suggest a club convergence. The club convergence is characterised by regions with similar income levels clustering together. The regional distribution of clubs is similar to the regional distribution of income. The study's findings provide important insights into the effectiveness of regional policy in Poland and suggest that policymakers need to focus on policies that promote catch-up growth in less developed regions. The study also highlights the importance of supporting the most developed regions in the country as they can play a crucial role in driving the country's economic growth and prosperity.

The monetary policy implementation and corporate investment are closely intertwined. The aim of modern monetary policy is to mitigate economic fluctuations and stabilise economic growth. One of the ways of influencing the real economy is influencing the level of investment by enterprises.

This chapter provides evidence on how monetary policy affected corporate investment in Poland between 1Q 2000 and 3Q 2022. We investigate the impact of Polish monetary policy on investment outlays in contexts of high uncertainty.

Using the correlation analysis and the regression model, we show the relation between the monetary policy and the investment outlays of Polish enterprises. We used the least squares method as the most popular in linear model estimation. The evaluation includes model fit, independent variable significance and random component, i.e. constancy of variance, autocorrelation, alignment with normal distribution, along with Fisher–Snedecor test and Breusch–Pagan test.

We find that Polish enterprises are responsive to changes in monetary policy. Hence, the corporate investment level is correlated with the effects of monetary policy (especially with the decision on the central bank's basic interest rate changes). We found evidence that QE policy has a positive impact on Polish investment outlays. The corporate investment in Poland is positively affected by respective monetary policies through Narodowy Bank Polski (NBP) reference rate, inflation, corporate loans, weighted average interest rate on corporate loans.

The last three decades have witnessed strong development of global value chains (GVCs). Also, the Polish economy developed international production links along with the systemic transformation from the beginning of the 1990s. This led to changes in Poland's participation in GVCs.

The Purpose of the Chapter: The study's primary purpose is to characterise the evolution of Poland's participation in GVCs since the mid-1990s, including its key determinants.

Several research methods were used to achieve the study's goal, including critical literature analysis, statistical data analysis and descriptive methods. To determine Poland's share in the GVCs, the method of estimating domestic and foreign added value was used, which allowed for measuring the scale of production fragmentation and related trade in value-added.

The analysis allowed us to conclude that Poland has increased its share in GVCs, mainly inside the EU. Also, the industrial structure underwent positive changes. The increasing Poland's participation in the GVCs was primarily due to the inflow of FDI-related technology, the transformation of the economic structure, institutional and geographical factors. The improvement in the conditions for the functioning of the Polish economy has been reflected in international competitiveness rankings, where such attributes as geographical location, macroeconomic performance, human capital, market size, technical infrastructure and innovativeness are indicated. On the other hand, however, the tightness of the law, the efficiency of the government and public administration remains a challenge.