97-120

• Zielińska-Głębocka, Anna

Is Polish manufacturing prepared for integration with the European single market? Does it have sufficient capacity to cope with the competitive pressures within the Union? Integration theory indicates that adaptability to the single market depends on a country's ability to accumulate and re-deploy resources rapidly in pursuit of new opportunities, while at the same time fully exploiting existing competitive strengths. Accumulation of resources was very successful in the majority of industries at the beginning of transformation and then dramatically deteriorated in the second half of the nineties. It may suggest that Poland was losing its ability to accumulate resources in manufacturing on the eve of accession. The speed of structural change in manufacturing has been increasing over the whole decade, indicating a high degree of industrial mobility of the Polish economy. Resources have been relocated across industries. Re-deployment in exports is much more pronounced than shifts in production and employment. The existing competitive strengths are exhibited mostly in traditional low-skill and labour-intensive industries. Nevertheless the structure of industry has dramatically changed over the period. The share of industries with medium-skill intensity of blue collar workers has crucially increased, the same trend has been reported for research- intensive sectors. Productivity analysis reveals that the rate of labour productivity has been much higher than the rate of TFP growth in the majority of industries in the years 1993-2000.

• Economics and Business
• Computer and information sciences

• Industries
• Statistics
• Production functions (Economic theory)

adaptability, accumulation, structural change, productivity

Περιέχει πίνακες, διαγράμματα και βιβλιογραφία, The analysis presented in the paper is a part of the research projects on Industrial Competitiveness of Polish Industry that have been implemented by the author and the research team of the EU Department of Gdansk University in the years 1999-2003. The project was financed by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research. The full report on the research results is presented in A. Zielinska-Glebocka ed. 2000 and 2003., JEL Classification: L60, F14, F15