MEASUREMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC AID FOR FARMS IN POLAND

Agricultural policy is an attempt to put into practice the laws of economic theory, in order to achieve goals defined by the State. This research, carried out on a sample of four groups of Polish farms, contributes to the question of how to improve short-term economic policy in order to stimulate market mechanisms for the long-term development of the sector. Using data from the Polish FADN for 2008-2019, the authors of the study apply the modified PSM method to determine the economic effects of changes taking place on farms. The research indicates that effective investments are the source of long-term development and economic success. At the same time, it shows that economic entities, by optimizing their microeconomic objective function, adjust investments to the objectives of public aid, which reduces the effectiveness of the use of financial resources.

Farmland Transfers in China: From Theoretic Framework to Practice

Land transformation in agriculture is a crucial global issue for food safety and regional sustainable development. In the context of Chinese rural revitalization strategy, farmland transfer has become an increasingly engaging area of focus for those in a broad range of fields. In this paper, we make a comprehensive review of land transformation in agriculture through literature analysis. Farmland transfers in China were characterized as five dimensions: public policy, market mechanisms, influencing factors, optimization of spatial distribution, and practical results. Meanwhile, we shed light on limitations of the theories and methodologies for farmland transfers in previous studies, and propose the highlights of farmland transfers in China in the future: (1) refining the theoretical systems of farmland transfer under the background of transformations, (2) optimizing land use configuration for farmland transfers within the context of national strategic decisions, (3) developing the land use model supported by big data for understanding farmland transformation; (4) enhancing the comprehensive analysis and interdisciplinary application perspective for farmland transfer issues.

Political Order and Poverty Eradication

Introducing the concept of viability, this study clarifies that the key to solving the poverty problem is to provide external assistance to nonviable residents. The study then proposes a simple model and explains that 1) although private market mechanisms are efficient for economic growth, public market mechanisms mobilizing societal resources are necessary and effective for poverty eradication; and 2) strong state capacity, competent leadership, and high social trust and support will benefit poverty eradication. The concept of viability and the model was further applied to compare the war on poverty in the US and the poverty alleviation plan in China in the following aspects: background and top design, public versus private market mechanism, leadership, social trust, and achievement. In addition, a cross-country investigation was conducted to obtain preliminary empirical evidence. The findings in this study support the concept and the model, which inspired us to provide some discussions.

PRIVATIZACIJA VISOKOG OBRAZOVANjA U REPUBLICI SRBIJI

The social changes that characterize the current period have their consequences in the field of higher education. A new practice is emerging that higher education is viewed through market mechanisms and that it is equated with goods. The state is changing its approach in relation to important social phenomena and thus in relation to education. As a consequence, there is a specific position of higher education institutions founded by the Republic of Serbia. The state in no way undertakes mechanisms so that the institutions of which it is the founder have a better position in relation to the higher education institutions whose founder is a private entity. The state even encourages investments of the capital of private founders in higher education, and interprets this, quite wrongly, as significant investments that have been made in the field of higher education.

The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply

This article investigates the performative role of accountancy in embedding market mechanisms in public services. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, it argues that marketisation can be understood as a work of calculative modelling in which the fiction of a self-regulating market is propagated through the concealment of the social and political practices on which it depends. Exploring this thesis in the marketisation of housing land supply, the article provides a forensic study of an accountancy procedure called the Housing Delivery Test that modelled an ideal housing market in the English land-use planning system. The study points to the importance of Polanyi's analysis in theorising the performativity of calculative practices in the project of marketisation, not as creating the economy they describe but in fashioning a fictional market.

Informal Academic Entrepreneurship: Current State and Development Trends

The concept of academic capitalism appeared in the international sociological discourse in the 1990s. However, Russian academic capitalism has taken unconventional forms as it develops in the shadow informal environment of the academic labor market. It covers a wide range of academic activities, e.g. tutorship, extra classes, ghost-writing of essays, theses and graduation papers, etc. Quite often, federal universities and research centers order grant reports, state assignments papers, and manuscripts for top peer-reviewed journals from provincial academics. The Russian market of shadow academic entrepreneurship is closed, secretive, tough, and highly competitive. The COVID-19 pandemic gave it a new rise: it increased three times in 2020–2021. New forms of digital employment and shadow academic capitalism lead to new social trends, e.g. new priorities appear in the subject of scientific research as academic institutions lose their profile in favor of their shadow academic employers. New flexible informal academic structures demonstrate faceted over-connectivity, non-market mechanisms of academic competition, and new forms of digital and traditional academic exploitation. Other trends include shadow branding of universities, proletarization and feudalization of academic labor, conflict of interests in science and education, formation of demand for low-quality higher education, monopolization in the academic market, etc. As a result, the academic community in Russia is transforming into a closed estate with its digital academic elite, middle class of academic entrepreneurs, and digital academic proletarians.

An uncertainty-based smart market model for groundwater management

This paper presents a new water market mechanism, which can be used for selecting the best trading policy by incorporating the uncertainties of total annual available water and wholesale price of agricultural products. In this mechanism, water users are asked to submit bid packages via a web-based platform. A bid package represents the real values that a user puts on different quantities of withdrawn groundwater considering its quality. Then, the most reliable water trading policy as well as the price of water are calculated by taking the market endogenous and exogenous uncertainties into account using the regret theory. The results show that by applying the proposed uncertainty-based smart groundwater market mechanisms to the Nough Plain in Iran, the average productivity of water users increases about 18% compared to the status quo condition. Furthermore, based on the outputs of the proposed market model, groundwater is finally distributed to agricultural users almost proportional to their farms area.

Demystifying China's Innovation Machine

China’s extraordinary economic development is explained in large part by the way it innovates. This book explains how it innovates, which has important implications not only for China but also for the rest of the world. Contrary to widely held views, China’s innovation machine is not created and controlled by an all-powerful government. Instead, it is a complex, interdependent system composed of hundreds of millions of elements, involving bottom-up innovation driven by innovators and entrepreneurs and highly pragmatic and adaptive top-down policy. Using case studies of leading firms and industries, statistics, and policy analysis, the book argues that China’s innovation machine is similar to a natural ecosystem. Innovations in technology, organization, and business model resemble genetic mutations which are random, self-serving and isolated initially, but the best fitting are selected by the market and their impacts are amplified by the innovation machine. This machine draws on China’s massive number of manufacturers, supply chains, innovation clusters, and digitally literate population, connected through supersized digital platforms. China’s innovation suffers from a lack of basic research and reliance upon certain critical technologies from overseas; its scale (size) and scope (diversity) possess attributes that make it self-correcting and stronger in the face of challenges. China’s innovation machine is most effective in a policy environment where the market prevails; policy intervention plays a significant role when market mechanisms are premature or fail. The book concludes that the future success of China’s innovation will depend on continuing policy pragmatism, mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and the development of the ‘new infrastructures’.