Volume 53 (2017): Edition 4 (December 2017)

The research measures the driving force of innovation in economic structure transition. In order to change the pattern of economic development, China is implementing a strategy of innovation-driven development. China’s capacity of innovation has been increasing, especially since 2012, and China’s innovations have taken a leap-forward development. Nowadays, innovation has become a main driving force in China’s economic development and hi-tech industries particularly make a great contribution. Although China’s tertiary industry has been dominant and its share in three industrial sectors has been exceeding 50% since 2015, a problem still exists in China’s economy that the proportions of primary and secondary industries are relatively higher compared with developed countries. In this paper we use PLSR model to measure the impact of innovation on China’s economic structure transition. It is found that innovation can expand the tertiary industry through shrinking the proportions of primary and secondary industries, transforming China’s economic structure into a more advanced pattern. Additionally, China is also devoting itself to the “Belt and Road Initiative”, which should be combined with China’s domestic innovation-driven development and realize sustainable development of economy worldwide.

On 1st January 2015 the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) - a new integration block comprising initially Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, and later that year also Armenia and Kyrgyzstan - appeared on the world map. This paper endeavors to identify the EAEU countries’ long-term international comparative advantages within four basic groups of goods according to the OECD classification of manufacturing industries based on technology intensity. The analysis, using B. Balassa’s RCA methodology and covering the years 2000-2014, indicates that these countries lack competitiveness, with none of them possessing any RCAs in the high-technology category whereas in the medium-hightechnology category - only Belarus. In contrast, all the EAEU countries fared the best in the medium-low-technology category, which is mostly attributable to the resources-based character of their economies. Surprisingly, dramatically low international competitiveness was recorded by Kazakhstan and Russia.

The first objective of this paper is to present theoretical approaches to the impact of trade growth (induced by monetary integration) on business cycle synchronization which is an important factor of a country’s readiness for a currency union accession. The main conclusion from the first part of the analysis is that business cycle convergence and the cost of the lack of an autonomous monetary policy depend on intra-industry trade (IIT) intensity rather than on general trade growth. The second objective is to assess - using the IIT index as a measure of business cycle synchronization (and of susceptibility to asymmetric shocks transmitted mostly through trade channels) - preparedness of the Polish economy to the euro adoption. Calculations reveal that the IIT intensity in Poland is already relatively high (in particular in relations with the euro area members) and continues to rise. This confirms the increasing complementarity of Poland’s economy with the economic structures of the euro area partners which reduces the probability of asymmetric shocks.

The demand for sovereign ratings has increased throughout last decades. Until the1990’s, credit rating agencies (CRAs) did not rate most of the emerging markets and the focus was almost only on developed countries, however, during this decade the number of sovereigns rated increased dramatically due to addition of emerging markets to the portfolio. The global financial crisis in 2008 led to the loss of credibility of these major credit rating companies. None of these three agencies showed any signal of macroeconomic problems in countries where the financial crisis created devastating macroeconomic results. It is believed that this failure has led credit rating agencies to behave more conservatively. This paper aims to determine whether CRAs tend to behave conservatively after the 2008 global financial crisis. If the downgrading is greater than the worsening of the economic situation in the given economies, then we can infer that CRAs tend to behave more conservatively. The good working model in estimating ratings assigned by CRAs before the crisis failed to estimate the ratings after 2008 crisis. This may have happened due to two reasons. First, as experienced in the aftermath of the former crisis, credit rating agencies may have added new macroeconomic variables in the process of assigning ratings or change the weight assigned to the already existing macroeconomic variables. Second, it is a known fact that ratings emerge from the combination of two distinct information; the quantitative part reflected by macroeconomic indicators and the qualitative judgements of the agency about the sovereign.

This paper discusses the firm-level determinants of international hotels’ foreign markets entry choices, contrasting acquisition with management and franchise contracts, based on a resource-dependency perspective and appropriability theory. It points out that brand equity, relatedness of products and market segmentation, partner-specific knowledge of hotels, international experience, and the duration of proprietary knowledge impact hotels’ decisions on how to enter a foreign market. In addition, the paper suggests the existence of entry choices sequence favorable to acquisition probability after the end of management contract when the franchisors’ or management companies’ proprietary knowledge attenuates. Contract activity is likely to be renewed after the acquisition, once the management company has established a new form or a higher level of proprietary knowledge.

The core objective of this paper is to determine the level of online dialogue in social media between the tourist industry leaders and their customers. This study applies sequential explanatory industry-representative comparison with statistical and qualitative analysis of online word-of-mouth communication. Its main finding is that even if online marketing is a hot topic, online channels seem to be neglected by the companies failing to provide real-time dialogue services. This results in the loss of customer attention and engagement and can be linked with overall corporate relationship management immaturity. In addition, the article offers vital insight into customer value creation chain of hotel and tour operators.