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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.

The dynamism of competition in international markets requires managers to react accordingly and ensure the firm's survival and competitiveness. This study examines the impact of cognitive styles and dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC) on a firm's international performance and the mediating role of these capabilities in the relationship between cognitive styles and international performance.

This study adopts a quantitative cross-sectional research design, employing a sample of 306 firm owner-managers from exporting companies in Kosovo.

The findings suggest that managers' cognitive styles positively influence firm international performance, including their impact on DMC. Results also indicate that only managerial cognition mediates cognitive styles' effects on a firm's international performance, compared to managers' social capital.

In this study, the authors contribute to the literature by integrating cognitive styles with DMC in a transition country. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that DMC mediate the impact of cognitive styles on the firm international performance.

The main objective of this chapter is to figure out various challenges emerging, or transition economies face in fostering sustainable finance. In this regard, extensive review of the extant and relevant literature is conducted with specification of time range, online database, and keywords. The findings suggest the various financing barriers experienced by emerging and transition economies in implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Furthermore, this chapter triggers further debate on green financing initiatives that can help in dealing with the challenges of sustainable finance. It is found that green financing initiatives offer significant solutions in emerging and transition economies. In addition, this chapter provides policy implications to academia, practitioners, financial institutions, and government agencies to promote sustainable finance.

This study aims to study the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the relationship between outsourcing and product innovation in entrepreneurial ventures in a transition economy.

The data of 10,296 Vietnamese entrepreneurial ventures from the four rounds of the survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam to investigate the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the association between outsourcing and entrepreneurial ventures’ product innovation performance. The Probit regression model is employed to estimate such associations.

Our research uncovered that the impact of outsourcing on the likelihood of product innovation is more significant for entrepreneurial operations characterized by a substantial degree of private ownership and government backing as opposed to those without.

The results of our research indicated that the resource-based perspective and extended resource-based view (ERBV) are essential in examining the impact of gaining resources or skills from external sources on the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises. These ideas have significance and importance not just in industrialized economies but also in countries undergoing transition. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial enterprises should have the ability to manage a wide range of resources and make decisions about which activities should be handled internally and which should be delegated to other parties.

Our findings also imply that entrepreneurial ventures should be able to control many resources and choose which tasks should be performed in-house and which should be outsourced to third parties.

By adopting and leveraging the resource-based view (RBV) and extended resource-based views (ERBV), our study developed a theoretical model about private ownership and government support for moderate outsourcing’s impact on entrepreneurial innovation in a transition economy.

This chapter investigates whether, and if so, how particular firms in a transition economy are involved in bribery. Built on pressure theories, we explain how the direct effects of firm characteristics and contextual characteristics determine firm bribery behavior. Entrepreneurs make choices based on perceptions of a specific pressure due to organizational characteristics (internal pressures) or due to context (external pressures). The relationship between firm characteristics, context, and bribery was estimated using unique data from a survey of 606 Vietnamese entrepreneurs. We controlled for various entrepreneurial, organizational, and industrial characteristics. The exploratory findings support firm attributes hypotheses, which is a negative relationship between firm size and bribery and a nonmonotonic U-shaped relationship between firm age and bribery. Besides, the effects of context on bribery are also found. Specifically, the result supports a positive relationship between competition and bribery and a negative relationship between the quality of the government and bribery.

Our paper studies a central issue with a long history in economics: the relationship between population and economic growth. We analyze the joint dynamics of economic and demographic growth in 111 countries during the period 1960–2019.

Using the concept of economic regime, the paper introduces the notion of distance between the dynamical paths of different countries. Then, a minimal spanning tree (MST) and a hierarchical tree (HT) are constructed to detect groups of countries sharing similar dynamic performance.

The methodology confirms the existence of three country clubs, each of which exhibits a different dynamic behavior pattern. The analysis also shows that the clusters clearly differ with respect to the evolution of other fundamental variables not previously considered [gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, human capital and life expectancy, among others].

Our results indirectly suggest the existence of dynamic interdependence in the trajectories of economic growth and population change between countries. It also provides evidence against single-model approaches to explain the interdependence between demographic change and economic growth.

We introduce a methodology that allows for a model-free topological and hierarchical description of the interplay between economic growth and population.

The present paper examines the barriers hindering the implementation of circular economy practices in Indian automotive industries and identifies the most critical barriers to be eradicated during the circular economy implementation.

Using a questionnaire survey-based analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach, 21 barriers to circular economy implementation are identified through a literature review and ranked using the opinions of relevant industrial experts.

Barriers, minimal or no proper economic incentives, difficulty in ensuring product quality and costing of CE products are identified as top barriers to be eliminated first to boost the chances of successful implementation of circular economy practices in Indian automotive industries.

The study not only offers a roadmap on the order of elimination of barriers towards a circular economy but also provides insights from industrial experts on how these barriers can be eradicated and the ill effects of each barrier from an automotive industry perspective.

The authors develop a theoretical framework for barrier analysis for circular economy implementation in the Indian automotive sector using the classic AHP approach to identify the most critical barriers against successful implementation. Further, this study offers managerial implications on how these barriers can be eradicated in real.

This paper aims to examine the Canadian financial sector’s reaction to opportunities and risks created by the green bond market in a low-carbon and climate-resilient (LCR) economy.

The authors used a concurrent mixed methodological approach that undertakes an online survey and semistructured interviews with critical green bond market stakeholders.

The most significant market driver in Canada is the reputational benefit for stakeholders, i.e. its ability to meet the high demand for sustainable finance and the marketing potential of its green credentials. The major market barriers are transactional costs, i.e. additional tracking required for reporting purposes, lack of market liquidity and identification of environmental impact or additionality. Canadian green bonds are also more likely to be evaluated on their green impact than their global market peers.

Limitations of this study include its focus on Canada, which may exclude or not apply to drivers and barriers in other green bond markets.

The paper helps create an accounting-based conceptual framework for key motivations and barriers that affect financial decision-making regarding green bonds.

The authors identify economic and policy-related barriers and drivers for green bonds, addressing the financing gap for the LCR economy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to identify and compare Canadian green bond market drivers and barriers and to examine relevant stakeholder- and policy-related approaches that can be targeted to scale this market effectively.

The paper analyzes the relative technical efficiency of the transition economies of the Western Balkans in the period 2007–2021, in comparison with the former countries with a socialist state system, today members of the European Union (EU), based on selected macroeconomic indicators and panel data.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), i.e. its extension, DEA Window analysis, is applied. Total technical efficiency, as a prerequisite of economic efficiency, is decomposed into pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE). Bootstrapping method and Mann–Whitney U test were used to check the robustness of the obtained results, i.e. efficiency values.

The results show that in 2020, all observed countries recorded a significant drop in economic efficiency as a result of a general, disproportionate drop in the value of selected macroeconomic variables, which occurred due to the global economic crisis and the slowdown in economic activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This drop in efficiency was significantly greater in the former socialist states, now members of the European Union, which showed their greater sensitivity to global crises. None of the observed economies in the observed period was relatively efficient, that is, at the level of best practice, which occurred primarily as a consequence of the inefficiency of business conditions expressed in the economies of scale.

The main limitation of this study stems from the very nature of the concept of DEA efficiency, which is relative in nature. Also, the results and their interpretation are also significantly influenced by the choice of model variables, as shown by Lábaj et al. (2013), as well as a small number of decision-making units (DMUs). The mentioned limitations prevent unambiguous interpretation and generalization of the obtained results.

The study may be of importance to economic policy makers in macroeconomic decision-making. The application of the DEA concept in measuring the technical efficiency of national economies is a useful tool in the analysis of macroeconomic performance and a benchmarking approach for positioning and achieving competitive advantage on the international market.

Since research of this type is very limited, the results of this study make a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature, creating a basis for future research and reexamination. The application of the DEA concept in measuring the technical efficiency of national economies is a useful tool in the analysis of macroeconomic performance and a benchmarking approach for positioning and achieving competitive advantage in the international market.