Doing Business 2013: Poland in the Global Top 10

On December 19, I gave a presentation on the World Bank's "Doing Business 2013: Poland in the Global Top 10" as part of the TIGER Seminar Series.

I explained how Poland became the global No. 1 in improving the business environment last year. Quite an achievement! I am proud to have played a role in it.

Click for more on the Doing Business ranking and Poland's performance.

My article in "Gazeta Wyborcza" on Doing Business

Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish daily newspaper, published an article co-authored by me on how to further improve Polish ranking in the World Bank's Doing Business report.

This comes after Poland was classified in the No. 1 place among the fastest reformers globally in Doing Business 2013, catapulting Poland into a 55th place overall.

I bet that Poland will soon enter the top 50, and will end up in the top 30 within the next couple of years. I will be happy to have contributed to this achievement.

Workshop on technology transfer in Tel Aviv

I have just come back from an EU-Israel workshop on technology transfer, which took place in Tel Aviv on November 25-26 (starting at 8.30am on Sunday!).

I spoke on the Polish experience with using 10 billion euro of the EU and Polish public funds to support enterprise innovation in Poland, based on a World Bank report, which I co-authored and which will be published in December.

Following the workshop, one of the participants, Prof. Shlomo Maital from MIT and Technion, wrote a very nice note on his blog on "Poland's Economy Excels", which seems to have been at least partly inspired by my presentation. Delighted to see some positive PR for Poland!

My quote in the Economist's article on Poland

This week's edition of the Economist features an insightful article on "Poland's progress. Tusk takes two".

I am quoted as saying that "growth this year could exceed 2.5%, reckons Marcin Piatkowski, a World Bank economist in Warsaw. He says Poland’s potential for productivity gains could make it the “Asian tiger of Europe”.

My earlier quotes are here:

• Petri-dish economies: Poland: Few woes in Warsaw
  Apr 28th 2011, 10:55 from print edition
• Poland's economy: Not like the neighbours
  Apr 23rd 2009, 11:48 from print edition
  says Marcin Piatkowski, a former IMF ...(24)
• Europe.view: Red turns grey and gloomy
  Jul 3rd 2008, 7:29 from web-only article
  
  

Conference on innovation and competitiveness, March 29

Last Thursday, March 29, I participated in a conference on „Badania i innowacje w restrukturyzacji przedsiębiorstw i zwiększeniu ich konkurencyjności” organized by the Polish Foundation for Management Promotion

I presented two World Bank reports, which I have co-authored, centered around employment, skills and innovation challenges facing the Polish economy.

There was a suprisingly large media feedback to what I said. Some of them are here below (in Polish):

http://kariera.pb.pl/2587402,59940,polsce-grozi-zapasc-na-rynku-pracy
http://www.forbes.pl/artykuly/sekcje/wydarzenia/po-2020-roku-w-polsce-zabraknie-rak-do-pracy,25628,1
http://praca.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/606906,po_2020_roku_polsce_grozi_brak_rak_do_pracy.html
http://m.wyborcza.biz/biznes/1,106501,11447314,Najwazniejsze_dla_Polski__wzrost_zatrudnienia_i_innowacje.html
http://www.bankier.pl/wiadomosc/Po-2020-roku-Polsce-grozi-zapasc-na-rynku-pracy-2511358.html
http://warszawa.biznespolska.pl/przeglad/214308/Ekspert:-po-2020-roku-Polsce-grozi-zapa%C5%9B%C4%87-na-rynku-pracy-.html
http://biznes.interia.pl/praca/news/ekspert-po-2020-roku-polsce-grozi-zapasc-na-rynku-pracy,1778780,4204
http://www.wnp.pl/wiadomosci/bez-innowacyjnosci-polska-gospodarka-zatrzyma-sie-w-rozwoju,166407.html

TIGER seminar on Doing Business in Poland

On December 14, 2011, I delivered a presentation on "Doing Business in Poland" within the TIGER Seminar Series.

Conference "The World and Europe in 2030"

I gave a speech on "The Inexorable Rise of Chimerica and its Implications for the Global Economic Order" as part of a conference organized by TIGER on December 8, 2011 within an EU-funded project AUGUR.

The background paper is available here. An updated paper will be available online soon.

Workshop in Seville on "Investigating Industrial and Innovation policies for Growth"

On November 2-3, 2011, I participated in an international workshop on "Investigating Industrial and Innovation policies for Growth: Contrasting experts views" organized by the European Commision's IPTS in Seville, Spain.

I spoke on "The 10 billion euro question': how to most effectively support innovation in Poland". The slides are here

U.S.-Central Europe Strategy Forum in Prague

On October 26-27, I spoke on a panel on "The EU After Greece: Toward a Two-Tiered Europe?" during a conference organized by the DC-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), where I published my two recent papers on New Europe's Golden Age and on the Warsaw Consensus, the new growth model for New Europe.


More info from CEPA's website:


"CEPA convened the third meeting of The U.S.-Central Europe Strategy Forum in Prague, Czech Republic. The Forum brought together a wide range of policy experts from both sides of the Atlantic, along with numerous mid-level policy professionals and leading authorities on U.S.-Central European relations, for a sustained dialogue on the state of America’s relations with its allies in the region."

Doing Business 2012 launch in Warsaw and Riga

On November 20 and 21, 2011, I presented the new World Bank's "Doing Business 2012" report in Poland and Latvia.

The Latvian Doing Business launch was particularly memorable, given that Latvia was included in this year's Top 10, global's ten best performing countries in regulatory reforms, and that at the press conference I was flanked by the Prime Minister Dombrovskis, minister of finance and minister of economy.

Pictures from the Warsaw and Riga presentations are here and here. There is also a video from the press conference in Riga.

Interview on innovation and Poland's growth prospects

Here is my interview on "Europa 2020 a wzrost PKB" (in Polish) published by Portal Innowacji, an online publication of the Polish Agency For Entreprise Development (PARP).

Workshop in Rio on Development Impact Evaluation

On June 6-10, 2011, I participated in a World Bank seminar in Rio de Janeiro on "Development Impact Evaluation in Finance and Private Sector", where I gave a presentation on "Public Support for Entreprise Innovation Policy" based on the innovation project that the World Bank is working on together with the Polish Ministry of Economy.

The workshop itself was surprisingly productive too, not only because it was held in Rio: it presented the state-of-the art methods for evaluating impact of policies using randomization and control group framework.

The take away from the workshop is that countries do not do enough of proper impact evaluations, which are needed to establish the true effect of policy interventions as well as the direction of causality. Without the new impact evaluations methods, policy interventions are likely to be much less informed/less efficient/and even plainly harmful.

For Poland, rigorous impact evaluations, subject to the availability of data, would be desperately needed to properly assess the efficiency of hundreds of public and EU-supported spending programs, worth billions of euros a year, whose efficiency is likely to leave much to be desired (to put it mildly)

Panel in Wroclaw on "Social Europe and the Economic Crisis", May 14

Last Saturday, May 14, I spoke on a panel during a conference on "Social Europe and the Economic Crisis" organized by the Ferdinand Lasalle Center of Social Thought in Wroclaw. More info here

"Europe and the World in 2030" workshop in Rome

This is to note that I presented a paper on "The Inexorable Rise of Chimerica: The Long Term Scenario" during a workshop in Rome on May 3-5, 2011, organized within an EU-funded multi-institutional AUGUR project on "Europe and the World in 2030".

Presentation in Brussels on May 11

On May 11, 10am, at the European Policy Center in Brussels, I am presenting a focus note on "Fueling Growth and Competitiveness through Employment, Skills, and Innovation", a note which I have co-authored, as part of the launch of the new World Bank's "EU10 Regular Economic Report", April 2011.

Here is a (somewhat misleading, since I did not mention the Soviet institutions in such a context) press article on the presentation.

More details below:

Wednesday, 11 May 2011 - 10.00 to 12.00
Policy Dialogue
The EU10 economic recovery and beyond - What scope for skills-driven growth?Speaker(s):
Kaspar Richter, Senior Economist, World Bank
Marcin Piatkowski, Senior Economist, World Bank
Grzegorz Radziejewski, Financial Counsellor, Head of the Budget and Finance Section, Permanent Representation of Poland to the EU

My quotes in The Economist

The Economist has just published three articles on Poland's politics and economic situation.

I am quoted in the economic section in: “Germany helped save Mitteleuropa” and "Mr Piatkowski speaks of a “New Golden Age”, with Poland converging on west European levels of well-being soon after 2020".

The full text of this insightful article is available online.

Lecture at CEPA in Washington DC, April 6, 9am-10.30am

I will deliver a lecture on "Central Europe: New Growth Model Needed?" at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

The lecture will be based on my 2009 paper "The Coming Golden Age of New Europe" and the 2011 paper on "Post-crisis Prospects and a New Growth Model for the EU-10" (both published by CEPA).

Supervision of SKOKs/credit unions in Poland

In February we launched a World Bank report on "Credit Unions in Poland: Diagnostic and Proposals on Regulation and Supervision", which I have co-authored.

The press release and the full report in English are here

World Bank report on "Fueling Growth and Competitiveness in Poland"

I have co-authored a new World Bank report on "Europe 2020 Poland: Fueling Growth and Competitiveness in Poland through Employment, Skills, and Innovation" launched last Monday.

The main message is this:

“Poland weathered the recent crisis very well, but there is uncertainty about whether it will be able to return to high growth rates, which exceeded 5 percent a year before the crisis, or, for that matter, to develop at a similar speed as a number of other high-achieving upper-middle-income countries such as Chile, the Republic of Korea, or Malaysia,” said Marcin Piątkowski, World Bank Senior Economist and one of the authors of the report. “Poland has already undertaken important reforms in many areas, but it needs to go further to sustain its impressive pre-crisis growth rates and meet the new targets on which Poland still lags behind.”


The press release and the report are here

Economic Policy Seminar in Budapest

I will deliver a lecture on "Growth Enhancing Structural Reforms" during the upcoming Hungarian Presidency High Level Economic Policy Seminar in Budapest on March 30 on "Economic Growth and Fiscal Consolidation". The program is here. My slides are here