About a dog and an innovation-friendly vision
Last Monday, I took part in the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper’s economic debate entitled ‘The end of the free market? Origins of the crisis’. Three questions were sent to the participants by the host:...
View ArticleThe implications of oil price slump
Low crude prices are now a fact and likely to remain so for the next few (or more) quarters. This is how long it will take the market to absorb the current supply glut and non-OPEC producers to cut...
View ArticleThe Energy Union – not as black as it’s painted
The Energy Union is still very much like a yeti. Though no one has seen it yet, it is already feared. But this is to be expected considering that the concept was born out of concern for security in the...
View ArticleAfter a digital revolution, time for a revolution in the energy sector
On February 28th 2015, I attended a very interesting event – the Polish Economic Forum. Held at the London School of Economics, the conference had been organised by Polish students of the LSE SU Polish...
View ArticlePower of latent demand
An innovation is a newly-invented product (service or technology) which has been successful on the market. When the first tablet came out, I was sceptical. How could it be better than a laptop...
View ArticleCheap oil and strong dollar
Crude oil and the US dollar are interconnected on many levels. Oil is one of the world’s most important commodities, while the dollar is the most powerful reserve currency, held by central banks as...
View ArticleRe-industrialising Europe
Recently, I have attended a debate on the re-industrialisation of Europe. Frankly, my response was simple. It was a question, really. What is this debate about? Europe has as much industry as it can...
View ArticleEuropean Energy Union
The union grows through crises – this phrase yields some 20 million search results about the European Union, even without clarifying what kind of union is meant, while searches related to the growth...
View ArticleEconomic policy recommendations from Nobel laureates
As it happened, I was unable to attend the lecture by Prof. Finn E. Kydland and Prof. Edward C. Prescott, entitled ‘The Poor Economic Performances in the EU and the US: Problems are Political, not...
View ArticleWhy does the price of gasoline fall slower than the price of oil?
Few economic phenomena attract as much attention in Poland as fuel prices. This is not surprising, considering that an average household owns at least one passenger car, and the share of fuels in total...
View ArticleChina is slowing down. That’s good news.
China has spooked investors. What has been happening on financial markets for over a month, since the speculative bubble burst in Shanghai, is reminiscent of the onset of the great recession in...
View ArticleRun, Forrest! Run!
It would seem that profit and growth are two sides of the same coin, which is a company’s continued presence on the market. As R&D spending is financed from profit, the higher the profit, the...
View ArticleCrowdsourcing
As a little boy I came up with an idea of how to become a millionaire. It was enough to persuade a million people to give me one dollar for some good cause. For them it would be a small expense and for...
View ArticleSaudi Aramco crude on the Baltic Sea – a one-off opportunity or new supply...
A Saudi Arabian vessel carrying crude oil has recently put into port in Gdańsk. The event would have likely gone unnoticed had it not been for Rosneft CEO’s comment that it marked another stage in...
View ArticleCompass for development
If we asked Polish citizens to put in one word what they expect of the government, I have no doubt that ‘change’ would be the prevailing answer. Wanting change is not something unique to Poles and has...
View ArticleWill the US oil export ban be lifted?
On October 9th 2015, the US House of Representatives passed, thanks to the Republicans’ votes, a bill lifting the oil export ban, which will have to be approved by the Senate, where the Republicans are...
View ArticleWhat would change if the US were to start exporting its oil?
More than a year ago, it was on the very same blog that I said that the US export ban would be lifted since maintaining it was not economically viable, and doing so would be beneficial to the economies...
View ArticleNext year likely to be the last year of cheap crude
Daily crude price data tell the story: in 2015 the prices yo-yoed. At the beginning of the year, Brent oil traded at 55 USD/bbl. In mid-May, the price went up to USD 66, to dip below USD 35 at the year...
View ArticleFrom modernisation to innovation
Innovation can be looked at from various points of view: of end users, whose life is made easier by innovations, of businesses that profit from selling their innovations, of businesses that modernise...
View ArticleInnovation is the concern of entire economy, not only businesses
Innovation is an alternative model of economic growth that relies on leveraging knowledge and experience, science and business to create a new reality, rather than merely copy or improve old designs....
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