Inward investment and economic development in Poland

This paper summarizes results of a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the UK Government. Its aims were to explore the nature and extent of foreign direct investment in Poland, and to assess the extent of integration of such investment with the indigenous economy. The research involved interviews with Polish government ministries, banks, development agencies, inward investors and indigenous firms. It concludes that there are numerous financial and technical obstacles to indigenous business development. The majority of inward investors aim to serve the Polish and other Central and Eastern European markets rather than simply selling cheaply produced products to the West. Moreover, most have already developed significant local sourcing from Polish suppliers.     

Innovation Advantages of Cities: From Knowledge to Equity in Five Basic Steps

This paper explores the reasons why cities are often major centres of innovation, even in some less favoured regions and countries. It starts with an anatomization of the dominant factors that explain why key less favoured settings developed 'new economy' clusters through institutional interaction with Silicon Valley. The analysis concludes that public research resources and private commercialization funding are central, supported by a wide array of private but few public innovation support services. It then examines a number of cases from cities in less favoured regions and countries where innovation has occurred. The conclusions are that the research-venture capital model is present and explains innovation in each case. However, in some cases public venture capital has to substitute for private due to market failure, or a phenomenon termed 'Silicon Valley Offshore' has been induced. Cities are innovative where they concentrate the desired scientific and investment knowledge capabilities.     

Pleistocene frogs from the Darling Downs,southeastern Queensland,and their palaeoenvironmental significance

Systematic collecting from fluvial late Pleistocene deposits from the Darling Downs, southeast Queensland, Australia, has led to the recovery of the first fossil frogs from the region, ail from the Myobatrachidae, a family of ground dwelling and burrowing frogs. The most common species recovered, Limnodynastes tasmaniensis, is extant on the Darling Downs. The fossil taxa include species whose extant populations inhabit arid zones(Limnodynastes sp. cf. L. spenceri), montane forests (Kyarranus spp.), and open woodlands (Neobatrachus sudelli), and indicate the existence of a mosaic of habitats during the Pleistocene. The absence of the Hylidae (tree frogs), a family common throughout the Darling Downs today, may be explained by a taphonomic bias that favours non-arboreal forms. Alternatively, hylids may have been rare or absent on the Darling Downs during the Pleistocene.