Poland's Enterprise Environment - A Polish View
The paper briefly presents environment for business in Poland as of the end of the year 2005. A few comments, however, on its evolution in the course of the transition period are also made. The paper broaches administrative, legal and financial requirements to start and run business activities by both natural and legal persons. In addition, it presents government support schemes for investors. A brief description of the scope of the grey economy and corruption completes the picture of the business environment. The topic has been approached from the foreign investors perspective. Although foreign in-vestors are subject to the same laws as domestic (Polish) ones, in a limited number of cases they are treated differently than the latter. These cases, and specifically land purchase and employment of foreign citizens, are reviewed.
Barriers to Entry and their Impact on Private Sector Growth in Poland
At the beginning of transition Poland was already far ahead of other former socialist countries with regard to the role of the private sector in the economy. For example, Polish farmers were never deprived of their land, as it was the rule in other countries under the communist regime.1 With 4 million people self-employed and employed in private farms Poland was unique amongst countries embarking on the road from a “planned” to a market economy. Outside agriculture, a further 1.8 million people worked in private companies, constituting 13.3% of employment in non-agricultural enterprises.
Bodies Politic : Disease , Death and Doctors in Britain , 1650-1900
In spite of its intellectual, literary and comic brilliance, this book contains a dark and disturbing, but revealing, message. In some ways, my melancholy reading of Bodies Politic has inevitably been shaped by Roy's recent untimely death. Roy Porter was without doubt the finest social historian of medicine this country, or indeed the world, has produced. Expansive, humorous, intelligent, and incisive, his broad range of historical works has excited and educated several generations of students of history over the past thirty years. His death leaves an unfillable void within the global history of medicine. At the same time, however, this book itself, completed well before his death, is haunted by elements of despair and uncertainty that should make us carefully reconsider not only the purpose and direction of our professional inquiries but also our own mortality.