Initial public pensions are indexed to the economy-wide average wages, butpensions in progress are indexed to prices, average wages or their combinations– varying across countries and periods. We create a simple overlapping cohortsframework to study the properties of indexing pensions in progress – emphasizinga neglected issue: close wage paths should imply close benefit paths even at realwage shocks. This robustness criterion of an equitable pension system is onlysatisfied by wage indexing, which in turn requires the adjustment of the accrualrate. To minimize the redistribution from low-earning short-lived citizens tohigh-earning long-lived ones, progression should be introduced.

Stefan Żeromski and Florian Znaniecki, perceived by many of their contemporaries as undisputed moral authorities, warned in the fi rst period of the existence of the Second Polish Republic against the danger of infl uence of Bolshevik ideology. They undertook issues of fundamental importance for the understanding of mutual relations and conditions between the socio-economic world, art, material prosperity, revolution and progress in the period after the First World War (1914–1918), when the power of the Bolsheviks had strengthened in Russia, and the Poles formed the foundations independent homeland. This text is an attempt to approximate the position of Żeromski and Znaniecki in this matter.

We analyze the medium- and long-run effects caused by an inflow of capital into a labor-abundant country. For that purpose, we incorporate directed technical change into a Heckscher-Ohlin model with a continuum of goods. This provides a comprehensive theory explaining the dynamics of comparative advantage based on differences in effective factor endowments, i.e. factor endowments adjusted by differences in technological levels. Our model constitutes an appropriate framework for understanding, e.g., the empirically observed changes in industrial structures of Central and Eastern European countries. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical foundation for the empirical Prospective Comparative Advantage index with new insights into the future dynamics of comparative advantage. Eventually, we show the importance of research spillovers and state dependence on the process of convergence.

The concept of a socially “just transition” should not only guide the redevelopment of coal mining regions, opening up the way to technological progress. It is also a chance for the rest of Poland to improve the quality of life and attain carbon neutrality.

The never before published paper is one of the last writings of Juliusz Żórawski (1898–1967), professor architect and theoretician of architecture. The notion of limited complexity introduced here relates to individual characteristics of the conceptual abilities of man. Tasks of architecture are based on prognoses, and this brings with it the risk of making errors. The author criticises J. Fourastié’s prognoses related to the Earth’s overpopulation in 3000 AD, which would force building new cities above the ground, contrary to human psychosomatic nature and habitude.

This article deals with the study of Gulf Arabic. By the means of the Qatari Arabic Corpus elaborated by Elmahdy et al. (2014), the aim of this study is investigating a number of selected verbal prefixes and the active participle gāʕid ‘sitting’ as a progressive aspect marker in Qatari Arabic, a relatively under researched variety in the field of Arabic Dialectology. A descriptive and quantitative approach in the data collection was adopted and the validation process, throughout the whole corpus which consists of 15 hours of speech flow, provided over 600 manually-selected tokens of verbal prefixes and active participles as progressive aspect markers whose main forms and functions were discussed in the paper.

RC flat slabs are one of the most popular and effective methods of shaping plates in buildings. Although failures of entire structures are relatively rare, they cannot be excluded from the occupancy cycle of the facility. The research analysis presented in this paper is an attempt to understand more precisely the phenomena that occur in the RC flat slab system and to assess the influence of the additional protection of the flat slabs against progressive collapse in the case of failure of one of the supports. The results were obtained from destructive experimental investigations of a flat reinforced concrete slab made in scale 1:3. The collapse in the analysed model was simulated by removing three edge columns and additional loading by means of hydraulic actuator. In place of the columns removed, differential tie reinforcement was applied. The results obtained confirm that the structure achieved a much higher ultimate load than the one resulting from the design calculations.

In order to investigate the progressive collapse performance of steel open-web sandwich plate structure, the sensitivity index and the importance coefficient of the bars are analyzed by the alternate path method. The condition that the model has perimeter supports with different parameters shows the result that: the redundancy index of structure increases at the structural edge, and the redundancy index will be reduced to changing degrees at the middle structure, when the stiffness of higher ribs increases. The redundancy index has little change, when the stiffness of lower ribs or shear keys increases. The sensitivity index of the shear keys dropped significantly, but the sensitivity index of the higher ribs and lower ribs increase, when the span to depth ratio increases. The sensitivity index of the higher ribs in L1 line increases significantly, when the span to depth ratio declines. So it is advisable to strengthen the higher ribs to avoid excessive sensitivity of ribs, when the span to depth ratio declines.

This paper discusses the influence of different sign conventions for strains and stresses, i.e. the solid mechanics sign convention and the soil mechanics sign convention, on the form of governing partial differential equations (the static equilibrium equations and the continuity equation) used to describe the wave-induced cyclic response of a poro-elastic seabed due to propagation of a sinusoidal surface water-wave. Some selected analytical solutions, obtained by different authors and published in specialist literature in the form of complex functions describing the wave-induced pore-fluid pressure, effective normal stress and shear stress oscillations in the seabed, have been analysed and compared with each other mainly with respect to different sign conventions for stains and stresses and also with regard to different orientations of the positive vertical axis of the two-dimensional coordinate system and different directions of surface water-wave propagation. The performed analyses of the analytical solutions has indicated many inaccuracies, or even evident errors and exemplary mistakes of wrong-signed values of basic wave-induced response parameters (the shear stress in particular), thereby disqualifying these solutions and their final equations from practical engineering applications. Most of the mistakes found in the literature must be linked to authors’ lack of understanding and consistency in an uniform application of a certain sign convention for strains and stresses in the soil matrix at both stages of mathematical formulation of the governing problem and correct interpretation of equations of the final analytical solution. The present paper, based mostly on a thorough literature review, ought to draw attention and arouse interest among coastal scientists and engineers in proper identification and use of the existing analytical solutions to the wave-induced cyclic seabed response – solutions which differ very often in the applied sign convention for stresses in the soil matrix.

This article examines the analogies, and more specifically the historical 'theatre of the imagination', between Tytus Czyżewski's Robespierre/Rhapsody (1927) and Stanisław Wyspiański's poetic dramas Rhapsodies (Kazimierz the Great and Bolesław the Bold). Each of those poems foregrounds its principal historical character. Wyspiański's dramatic poems, commonly known as Rhapsodies, focus on Kazimierz the Great, Bolesław the Bold, and Piast. kings of pivotal significance in his vision of Poland's historical destiny. Twenty years later Tytus Czyżewski, an acclaimed avant-garde painter and poet, composed a poetic-essayistic salmagundi, in which he sought to render in a similarly elevated style and condensed dialogue the drama of the leaders of the French Revolution, Robespierre and Danton. While Robespierre has to face, apart from some common people, God, the Spirit and Judges that sit in judgment on him, the final section of Rhapsody evokes Juliusz Słowacki. A monologue, mimicking his lofty verse, establishes a metaphorical common thread in Polish history – from the days of mail-clad knights to the wretched everyday life in the trenches – set against a broad background of wars, destruction and the French Revolution. For Czyżewski the French Revolution was a ground-breaking event, the first act of a great historical process that ushered in the Modern Age with its ideas of progress, reason, freedom, social justice, the elimination of poverty. It continues to inspire mankind with the hope that even a most ambitious change is possible. For Wyspiański, on the other hand, the grand project of human emancipation does give rise to doubts whether a wholesale obliteration of the Old is justified and to questions about God, free will, theodicy and destiny, and the 'tyranny of reason'. The differences between the two philosophies of history – Wyspiański's, from the turn of the 19th century, and Czyżewski's, representative of the artistic and intellectual climate of the late 1920s – are no doubt profound, and yet, what both of them seem to share is a deep concern with the relevance of history for the present and for designing the future.