This book deals mainly with economic growth, its interdependence with social capital, and the consequences of the “happy productive worker” hypothesis. A happy employee works better, earns more money, and as a result, his quality of life goes up. This feedback loop of productivity and happiness means that on the road to effective economic growth and development, man and his quality of life must be taken into consideration as a very important causative factor. The authors guess that the social capital (trust, helpfulness, fairness), family social capital (marriage, divorce, fertility), as well as income inequality are social determinants of the quality of life, sustainable growth and development. They all are characteristics of society’s harmonization. Most of these hypotheses have been verified using econometric models. We hope that such an approach will help to reduce the danger of the fetishization of economic growth. Likewise, the hypothesis on non-cyclical GDP fluctuations was considered, where efficiency of fixed capital investment depends on post bottlenecks. The book summarizes Jon Jacek Sztaudynger’s scientific work on economic growth over the last twenty years. It contains six published articles (co-authors: Ewa Ambroziak, Paweł Baranowski, Paweł Starosta, and Jan Marek Sztaudynger).

The main aim of the paper is to determine the similarities and differences in the convergence and synchronization of business cycles in the EU and EMU in 1995-2018. The secondary goals are the following: a) the identification of the core and peripheries of European business cycles; b) the effects of monetary integration and the level of economic development and scale of the economy on the convergence and synchronization of business cycles. The results from the descriptive statistics and the correlation and regression analyses are: 1) classical cycles have a relatively high and similar concordance with the EU and the EMU, while at the same time they are strongly divergent on recession; 2) synchronization of the growth cycles is more diversified than classical cycles; 3) there is a clear division between the core and peripheries of European business cycles; 4) convergence of cycles is much more diversified than their synchronization; 5) level of economic development and the scale of the economy have an important influence on the convergence and synchronization of business cycles.

In the current issue of the Financial Sciences magazine, articles introducing various areas are presented. However, it is the banking subject matter that dominates. I. Alyeksyeyev and A. Mazur present the comparative analysis of the protection deposit system in relation to the Ukrainian regulations. I. Alyeksyeyev and O. Pozniakova deal with the comparison of the ownership transformation in banking system in Poland and Ukraine. The importance of banks in green and digital transformation is presented in the scientific description written by B. Ryszawska. The analysis of imperfections of economic information transmitted by banks is shown in the article by E. Wiszniowski. I. Alyeksyeyev, S. Paranchuk and O. Chervinska present the problems of companies’ taxation and tax planning. The paper written by I. Kondrat and O. Kots is more interdisciplinary. The research refers to the relations between financial deepening of the banking system and economic growth. We hope that the current issue will become an interesting piece of reading.

In this volume of the journal “Economics of the 21st Century” we present six scientific papers, which take under consideration macroeconomic problems observed in the global economy. In the first three articles researchers concentrate on economic matters analysed from the perspective of the European Union. In a paper devoted to the competitiveness of Central and Eastern Europe M. Myszkowska studies the ten economies forming this region, trying to determine – through the prism of an adequate set of competitiveness’ factors – what decides about productivity and prosperity in these countries. In his article G. Shkabarin conducts an analysis of foreign direct investments’ spillovers in transitive economies on the example of the Baltic countries. He examines the effects for the productivity at various levels and attempts to determine the existence, sign and magnitude of different types of spillovers. In turn, A. Skórska searches for an answer to the question what the scale, dynamism and disparities of employment and underemployment in the European Union are. She also speculates what the chances are to achieve employment objectives in the context of strategy “Europe 2020”. The focus of J. Kundera is the economic crisis in Greece. The author attempts to identify its causes and deliberates what changes Greece must implement in its economic policy and what institutional reforms should be carried out in the European Union to overcome the present crisis and prevent their occurrence in the future. The presented volume is concluded with two scientific texts, the authors of which analyse chosen macroeconomic issues on the example of Poland. The article of A. Ablov examines the firm-level and regional determinants of inward foreign direct investments into Polish enterprises in the framework of sectoral analysis. He aims to find out which of these determinants influence investments attraction more and how their effects vary depending on the segment of the economy. In turn, A. Kuźmińska--Haberla and M. Haberla investigate the most vital challenges of medical tourism. Their article presents major determinants of development of such a phenomenon in Poland, the most important benefits offered by rapid growth of this field of economy and concerns about medical tourists. The papers included in this very publication bring new insights into selected macroeconomic problems in the modern global economy. We hope that a Reader interested in these subjects will find here the incentives for further research and scientific inquiry. Bogusława Drelich-Skulska, Wawrzyniec Michalczyk