Papers by Agnieszka Kopańska
Socio-economic planning sciences, Feb 1, 2024
The study explores the critical aspect of private entities' motivation to participate in ... more The study explores the critical aspect of private entities' motivation to participate in crucial public projects through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). The research provides significant theoretical and practical insights, grounded in Transaction Cost Theory and a unique database of PPP tenders in Poland for the 2009-2020. We examine the role of the legal form, payment model, project length, advisory participation, economic conditions and support from institutions on private side engagement in such projects. Flexible contracts, with a more balanced risk-sharing between partners positively impact private entities' interest in PPPs. Private partners tend to prefer public partners who are financially stable and are interested in projects located in more developed regions. Providing government support for public partners in PPPs can discourage private partners while subsidizing the PPP project itself has encouraged their participation.
Wiadomości Statystyczne, Mar 31, 2023
Ageing populations are a challenge for public finances. The problem is recognised better at count... more Ageing populations are a challenge for public finances. The problem is recognised better at country than at local level. This study aims to analyse the impact of the ageing of populations on the revenues and expenditures of Polish municipalities, as well as on their most important components. The author performed an econometric analysis (fixed effects regression) of panel data for 2,414 municipalities between 2004 and 2019. The data for the study was obtained from budgetary statements of Polish municipalities collected by the Ministry of Finance. It was preceded by an international literature review and an analysis of demographic changes in municipalities. The demographic data came from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. The study positively verified the hypothesis that if the proportion of elderly citizens in a municipality increases, the local budget shrinks. A decrease in revenues and spending per capita was observed, which could mean that in ageing municipalities, citizens receive fewer and/or lower-quality public services. Since public services are in greater demand among lowerincome and less self-supporting citizens, they will be influenced by the cutting of local budgets to the largest extent. The study showed that ageing municipalities tend to spend less on care homes than those where the proportion of the elderly is smaller, even though this form of care is particularly needed in ageing communities. It means that the ageing problem might deepen horizontal inequalities between municipalities. Preventing this from happening requires effective local strategies in addition to a well-devised central policy.
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences , 2024
The study explores the critical aspect of private entities' motivation to participate in crucial ... more The study explores the critical aspect of private entities' motivation to participate in crucial public projects through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). The research provides significant theoretical and practical insights, grounded in Transaction Cost Theory and a unique database of PPP tenders in Poland for the 2009-2020. We examine the role of the legal form, payment model, project length, advisory participation, economic conditions and support from institutions on private side engagement in such projects. Flexible contracts, with a more balanced risk-sharing between partners positively impact private entities' interest in PPPs. Private partners tend to prefer public partners who are financially stable and are interested in projects located in more developed regions. Providing government support for public partners in PPPs can discourage private partners while subsidizing the PPP project itself has encouraged their participation.
Wiadomości Statystyczne. The Polish Statistician,, 2023
Ageing populations are a challenge for public finances. The problem is recognised better at count... more Ageing populations are a challenge for public finances. The problem is recognised better at country than at local level. This study aims to analyse the impact of the ageing of populations on the revenues and expenditures of Polish municipalities, as well as on their most important components. The author performed an econometric analysis (fixed effects regression) of panel data for 2,414 municipalities between 2004 and 2019. The data for the study was obtained from budgetary statements of Polish municipalities collected by the Ministry of Finance. It was preceded by an international literature review and an analysis of demographic changes in municipalities. The demographic data came from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. The study positively verified the hypothesis that if the proportion of elderly citizens in a municipality increases, the local budget shrinks. A decrease in revenues and spending per capita was observed, which could mean that in ageing municipalities, citizens receive fewer and/or lower-quality public services. Since public services are in greater demand among lowerincome and less self-supporting citizens, they will be influenced by the cutting of local budgets to the largest extent. The study showed that ageing municipalities tend to spend less on care homes than those where the proportion of the elderly is smaller, even though this form of care is particularly needed in ageing communities. It means that the ageing problem might deepen horizontal inequalities between municipalities. Preventing this from happening requires effective local strategies in addition to a well-devised central policy.
Meditari Accountancy Research
Purpose This paper aims to determine whether local governments (LGs) use non-consolidated municip... more Purpose This paper aims to determine whether local governments (LGs) use non-consolidated municipally owned companies (MOCs), excluded from public sector entities and, consequently, from sub-national debt to avoid fiscal debt limits. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the fiscal debt rule’s impact on the off-budget municipal activities in total and separate in different types of local government units. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses difference-in-differences and the system general method of moments model with the Blundell–Bond estimator for dynamic panel data analysis of MOCs owned by 866 Polish municipalities in 2010–2018. Findings This paper shows that the MOCs’ revenues support limited local public debt capacity by indebtedness restrictions imposed on municipalities in 2014. As a result, less indebted municipalities have higher off-budget revenues. The tightening of fiscal rules related to sub-sovereign indebtedness increased off-budget activities,...
Kwartalnik naukowy. Studia Regionalne i Lokalne, 2006
The aim of the paper is to analyze how limits in revenue and spending autonomy of sub-sovereign g... more The aim of the paper is to analyze how limits in revenue and spending autonomy of sub-sovereign governments influence these governments’ decisions. The analysis is focused on Polish towns current spending for schools in years 2002-2013. It presents that revenue autonomy increases towns spending, however the results are different for various categories of expenditure. The expenses were disaggregated for spending for teachers and other schools’ recourses. The first category is the most important in schools’ budget and in Poland is strongly (but not completely) determined by central regulations. The second category is more decentralized. It is presented that less decentralized spendings are unified among towns and are higher in more revenue’ autonomous towns, the spending autonomy doesn’t influence them. In case of more decentralized tasks, differences among municipalities are important, expenditure is influenced by spending autonomy, not by revenue autonomy. These results show that less autonomous tasks crowd out others.
Accession to EU created important investment boom in the water and sewage sector in Poland. New i... more Accession to EU created important investment boom in the water and sewage sector in Poland. New investments improved quality of water and sewage services, but also led to price rise. That situation created strong need to analyze and improve efficiency of water and sewage firms. Ac-cording to theory, but also evidence from other countries, benchmarking or at least so called “sunshine regulation ” generates pressure to develop ef-fectiveness of local monopolies. The aim of below paper is to analyze the possibility to apply benchmarking in water and sewerage sector in Poland. The first part of the work presents a brief overview of theoretical and prac-tical conclusions of benchmark analyses carried out in various countries in the water supply and sewage sector for the last twenty years. The over-view aims at showing a variety of tools within benchmarking, as well as their advantages and limitations. The second part of the work presents the water supply and sewage sector in Poland. Two ...
Grants are important part of municipal budgets. Due to horizontal and vertical imbalance, there a... more Grants are important part of municipal budgets. Due to horizontal and vertical imbalance, there are no possibility to resign from this source of financing local governments. According to theoretical model, which is discussed in this paper the impact of grants on municipal spending depend on income and price effect. Previous empirical research presented, that due to political rent-seeking behaviours’ we could suspect also other effects, such as leakage of funds from granted project and increase of other expenditure not related to the project. In this paper we presented panel data analysis for Polish rural municipalities. We tried to find if and how investment grants from European Union influence other-operational spending of municipalities. The results are not obvious, but analysed model presented that potential impact of EU investment grants on operational spending policy is very limited.
Agnieszka Kopańska; Grażyna Bukowska Abstract The aim of the paper is to analyze factors influenc... more Agnieszka Kopańska; Grażyna Bukowska Abstract The aim of the paper is to analyze factors influencing Polish local governments spending behaviors on education. The special focus is given to degree of decentralization or more generally elasticity which differ various tasks related to education. We based our analysis on two types of data and studies. We present results of qualitative studylocal officials survey made in 30 municipalities, and quantitative studylocal budget panel analysis for 2274 municipalities and the period 2006-2011. We found that local governors do not actively influence salaries of the teachers. The revenues or more generally differences in financial statement of local units do not importantly explain the variation in this task. Municipalities change the level of salaries according to central government regulations and increase them every year. On the other hand they do not decide to change number of teachers, even in case of lowering number of pupils in schools an...
Local Government Studies, 2019
In this article, we estimate the main determinants of local government's engagement in public-pri... more In this article, we estimate the main determinants of local government's engagement in public-private partnership (PPP) projects using logistic panel regression. We use data from 2478 municipalities and cities in Poland from 2009 to 2016. The results show that municipalities with higher levels of indebtedness have a higher probability of opening PPP tenders while local units that are more dependent on central grants or receive more European grants are less engaged in PPP. We also found that the mayors of municipalities and cities with stronger electoral competition engage in PPP with a higher probability. These results are important for discussions on the efficient use of PPP. They show that local government decisions made in conditions of fiscal constraint and political struggle can blur the PPP's value-for-money aim.
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Papers by Agnieszka Kopańska
były współfinansowane z dotacji pozyskanych ze środków europejskich. Wśród sposobów realizacji i źródeł finansowania pokazane zostały dotacje ze środków europejskich oraz partnerstwo publiczno-prywatne.
thus far, has been unaccompanied by significant cases of financial distress. Indeed, not only is the Polish municipal capital market among the most dynamic in the region, but it has clearly become a permanent and increasingly important component of the country’s local government finance system. Nonetheless, the market is still in its infancy. The total outstanding debt of local governments remains less than 16% of their annual revenues. More importantly, most local governments continue to finance the vast majority of their investments on a pay-as-you-go basis with debt being used to finance less than 20% of their capital
expenditures. Moreover, approximately half this debt comes from subsidized credit lines for the improvement of environmental infrastructure and thus is not strictly market-based.
At the same time, the market is filled with all sorts of anomalies, some of which are potentially dangerous. For example, the Polish bond market has grown rapidly over the last six years. Most of the issues, however, have been for less than a million dollars and have been purchased in their entirety by the underwriting bank. Similarly, the maturities
of most municipal credits rarely exceed five to seven years, and their interest rates are almost always variable. This is odd not only because inflation has fallen dramatically over the last few years—and stayed relatively low—but because the national government
has begun to issue fixed-rate instruments with ten-year maturities that could and should serve as benchmarks for subsovereign lending.
Finally and most importantly, there are indications that over the last two years increasing numbers of local governments are using long-term debt to finance operating deficits. Obviously, if this is the case it could lead to serious problems for the country in general and for the still immature municipal capital market in particular. In short, the development of local government borrowing in Poland has been both dynamic and
promising, while at the same time fraught with all sorts of curious behaviors, regulatory weaknesses, and potential dangers.
In the following, we attempt to explain both this dynamic growth and to analyze the outstanding structural weaknesses of the market. We will argue that the foundations of this growth lie above all in the essential soundness of the finances of Poland’s primary and most important tier of local government, the gminas (municipalities). At the same
time, we will argue that most if not all of the most important threats to the market lie in the relative weakness of the two new levels of government that Poland created in 1999, the recent weakening of municipal fi nancial standing and the challenges posed
by the absorption of EU funds.