Basic income: economy and psychology

Basic income is a social idea appealing to humanist philosophers and politicians. Numerous experiments on the introduction of the concept of basic income occurred in countries with varying degrees of economic development. Surveys are being conducted around the world on the need to introduce basic income. Dynamics of economic processes and social sentiment in individual countries require generalisation of modern factors influencing the possibility of practical implementation of the concept of basic income. This paper studies the economic and psychological factors for supporting the idea of basic income in terms of its practical implementation, analyses the interpretation of the UBI idea by various researchers and provides a characteristic of the modern vision of basic income. The arguments for and against the practical implementation of this idea with their structuring in the following directions are formed and considered: influence on the economy, change of social relations and possibility of practical realisation. The authors presentgeneralised results of the experiments on the introduction of basic income from the 1960s to the present day in South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, as well as the results of the poll and referendum on the introduction of basic income in Switzerland in 2016.

The Belt and Road Initiative as a tool for promoting EU-China trade. Poland’s case

The aim of the study is to evaluate the potential role of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for promoting EU – China trade, and especially Poland – China trade. We test two hypotheses: 1) Non-tariff barriers (NTBs), particularly related to railway transport, are significant for Poland – China trade, and 2) Poland – China trade fits railway transport well. Therefore, we start with a study of the significance of tariff and non-tariff barriers in mutual trade relations, including transport-related barriers. NTBs are mainly derived from the EU Market Access database, and as for transport-related barriers – the logistics performance index (LPI) is used. As the next step, we study the composition of bilateral trade in static and dynamic terms using the OECD TiVA database. In the light of the significant increase in NTBs on EU manufacturing products exported to China and the railway transport infrastructure performance in Poland, the BRI could become an effective tool for improving the business environment for EU exporters. By contrast, the BRI project is more suitable for China and the EU as a whole than for Poland in terms of commodity structure of bilateral trade.