Volume 57 (2021): Issue 2 (June 2021)

The objective of this paper is to provide insight into the regulatory solutions that refer to the electronic commerce (e-commerce) adopted in the regional trade agreements (RTAs) of the European Union. Our goal is to compare these regulatory measures with the obstacles indicated in the literature as key issues hampering international digital trade. We provide a formal-dogmatic analysis of all of the newly adopted RTAs. The findings resulting from this analysis indicate that even though the regulatory dimension of global economic trade attempts to somehow address the issues resulting from the specific characteristics of the digital economy, the process is still in its infancy. The majority of provisions do not consider the key problems that impede international digital trade. The originality of our work results from its focus on the most recent RTAs, the analysis of which is hardly present in the scholarship.

Misselling is the sale of financial services that do not meet the needs of consumers or in the manner or the way they are sold, which is not appropriate to the nature of those services. The first aim of this article is to characterise the misselling phenomenon and present the most important circumstances surrounding its occurrence. The second aim is to examine the level of consumers’ awareness and knowledge of misselling and to show way to protect against misselling, among which the most important postulate is to increase the level of consumers’ financial education. The promotion of financial education could improve consumers’ sense of security, improve the degree of adjustment of financial services to consumer requirements, strengthen the awareness of the assistance that consumers can receive from public institutions and positively contribute to the activity of Poles on the financial market.

Over the recent years, money has become one of the most compelling topics in modern societies. Consequently, financial literacy turns out to be an indispensable ability in today’s complex reality. Numerous studies reveal that the level of financial literacy is dependent on the socio-economic context in which the financial experience is formed. Against this background, this study aims to verify how the specific socio-economic context affects the perception of students with regard to the main sources of private wealth in the Western and Eastern Bloc countries. The research problem focuses on the following question: Do students’ perceptions precisely reflect the economic reality in their countries? Data from 115 essays written by students from Poland, Austria, Russia, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Ukraine were analyzed using directed qualitative content analysis. A structured matrix of four predetermined sources of wealth – CEO compensation, financial trading, entrepreneurship, and inheritance – was developed and subsequently compared with students’ observations. As a result, two conceptual models were developed presenting differences in the perceptive schemes of Western and Eastern Bloc students. Then the perceptions were compared with empirical data from the Forbes list of billionaires. This paper provides an example of how essays written by students can become a source of empirical research. Its added value lies in showing the usefulness of directed qualitative content analysis in socio-economic studies.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the macroeconomic sector of medical tourism and to demonstrate through empirical research the possibilities of using business opportunities for the development of medical tourism in Poland. The thesis is to point out that development of companies in medical tourism is one of the components of metropolises’ sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the problem of power distribution within networks of relationships between companies and consumers (business-to-consumer (B2C) networks) and to examine the ways in which value is created and captured in such structures. To this end, we applied the network approach to multiple theoretical constructs describing collective consumer phenomena, carried over from the field of sociology to management science. Based on the literature and case study analysis, we managed to define a typology of B2C networks consisting of three types: (1) publics – centered around and dominated by a company, with no relationships between consumers themselves, creating value through crowd-sourcing; (2) communities – also centered around a company, but independent to a degree and more focused on consumer-to-consumer (C2C) relationships, creating value through consumer-managed projects; and (3) tribes – where companies serve only as peripheral actors, and their products – as potential symbols of affiliation, with value being created through creation and reinterpretation of the said products’ meanings (sign value).

The paper aims to identify the significant tax barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) in Poland, in particular in the form of a permanent establishment (PE), in the context of new developments in international tax law. Due to the recommendations of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, launched by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to prevent international tax avoidance, the understanding of PE has changed, which could lead to changes in business models. The purpose of the research is also to identify the significant tax barriers to economic activity in Poland, in particular in the form of PE, against the international tax law context. The study conducted by the authors relies on the most current tax rulings and judgments of administrative courts issued between 2017 and 2020. It is concluded that not so much the effective tax burdens but the regulatory ambiguity surrounding the tax obligations may contribute to the reduction of Poland's attractiveness as a location for FDI.