Recently there has been a significant debate about the possible implementation of a centralized capacity mechanism in Poland. Despite the fact that capacity adequacy is currently being discussed at the national level as a long-term issue, the lack of sufficient capacity and insufficient demand flexibility has already been observed on a number of occasions. In July 2016, the Polish Ministry of Energy expressed its support for the implementation of a market-wide capacity mechanisms. In view of these recent events, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on the possible implementation of a capacity market in Poland. The paper presents a brief overview of the key problems that the Polish power sector faces and provides a comparative analysis between some of the main elements of the Polish capacity market proposal and the GB capacity market.

Natural resources and the extractive industries play a central role in the economy of developing countries and the lives of nearly half of the world’s population. The increasing demand for oil, gas, and mineral resources has led some countries to prioritize the extractive industries; yet, there is growing empirical evidence that in some cases governments have neglected other sectors of the economy, making them highly dependent and vulnerable to volatile commodity prices. Latin American countries face the challenge of changing their model of primary-export specialization and move away from their dependence on natural resource-intensive exports in order to avoid being vulnerable to commodity cycles. In this context, given the limited literature available on measuring the dependence on the extraction of oil, gas and minerals of the Ecuadorian economy, the objective of this article is to twofold. First, to provide a snapshot of the historical and current situation of Ecuador’s natural resource dependence. Second, to estimate the Extractives Dependence Index (EDI) scores for Ecuador for the years 2003 to 2017. The EDI is a generally accepted method for measuring a country’s aggregate dependence on natural and mineral resources. Based on the EDI scores obtained, we analyze the variation of this indicator and investigate the effect of extractives dependence on the Ecuadorian economy. Results show that despite the government’s significant efforts to diversify Ecuador’s economy, the country has a persistent dependence on the extractive sector.

Recent empirical research has provided compelling evidence that the proliferation of intellectual property rights (IP) and the fragmentation of patent rights among different patent holders have created barriers to innovation and impediments to the commercialization of scientific discoveries. Legal and economic scholars have suggested that due to the rising number of patent applications, the limited resources in patent offices around the world and the lack of sufficient time to prior art search, examiners have failed to conduct thorough patent examination processes. Moreover, researchers have linked the growing number of overlapping intellectual property rights to the tragedy of the anticommons and to the concept of patent thickets. Multiple studies have been performed in order to develop measures that could verify the existence of patent thickets and to better understand the social and economic impact of fragmentary patent owners. When it comes to the energy sector, the problem of patent thickets is now even more important. As the technological innovation in this sector increases and the energy-related patenting continues to grow, it has been argued that the issue of patent thickets may have a direct impact on investment decisions and the long-run development of this sector. This paper presents an overview of literature on the definition of a patent thicket and summarizes some of the possible factors causing thickets to arise. Additionally, it discusses the recent developments in patent thicket measures and patent thicket identification methods.

For much of the last two decades, the Central and East European (CEE) economies have experienced a deep structural reform, moving away from a socialist economic system towards a market economy. The political situation of the second half of the 20th century had a significant impact on the economic development and competitiveness of these transition countries, when compared with their Western European counterparts. A vast number of studies have been conducted to analyze the structural changes required for resource-dependent economies to achieve long-term development and to understand the synergies between commodities and diversification. Yet, the dynamics of resource extraction and the resource dependence of regions that have experienced periods of sustained levels of growth have largely been overlooked, especially the Central and Eastern European region. In this context, this article presents an analysis of the level of resource dependence of six countries which joined the European Union between 2004 and 2007. Using data spanning from the year 2000 to 2017, we calculate the Extractives Dependence Index (EDI) of six former Soviet satellite nations and one former Soviet state. Our results indicate that the commodity structure of trade in the six countries which joined the European Union has changed considerably. These countries have reduced their economic dependence on extractive resources by developing their high value-added and technology-intensive sectors. Our findings also reveal that Poland experienced the highest decrease in EDI scores among the six CEE countries.