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Studies conducted so far suggest that SEZs are not treated by local authorities as the main mechanism of job creation in a given region. The objective of this paper is to highlight potential mechanisms through which SEZs impact labour markets in poviats (counties) in Poland. To this end we conducted a comparative analysis of changes that had taken place in the labour market over the period 2004–2016 in two groups of poviats with the highest unemployment rate reported in 2004: with and without SEZs. The study does not allow us to unambiguously conclude that SEZs contributed to the improvement of labour market situation in poviats with the highest unemployment rate in Poland. That can be attributed to the fact that SEZs in Poland are highly fragmented as well as to SEZs investors being able to select locations for their investment projects in relatively better developed regions.

Relations between metropolitan core cities and regional and sub-regional centres are part of a broader discussion on the importance of metropolitan areas for the development of regions. These relations are dealt with in this paper in the context of the growth pole theory. The paper focuses on the migration process in relation to enterprises. By moving their businesses, companies contribute to backwash and spread effects. Since company migrations between municipalities occur in both directions, the question remains open as to which migration direction dominates – whether from sub-regional centres to core cities or vice versa. This paper attempts to verify the hypothesis that regional and sub-regional centres in the Mazowieckie voivodship suffer the largest loss of enterprises due to migration to the core city of Warsaw. The results obtained were varied and the hypothesis was confirmed, especially in the case of three cities: Siedlce, Radom and Płock; and partly in the case of Ciechanów.

Companies relocate in various manners. Some of them move by way of foreign direct investments, other relocate within their countries, regions or local areas of operation (e.g. when a company moves its seat to a different street). This paper focuses on the issue of relocating companies’ seats. Data analysis (on NUTS2 level) indicates that migration of companies leads to an increased concentration of businesses in the Mazovia region, in particular in Warsaw. Additionally, it was demonstrated that in all of the Polish voivodeships the majority of companies that migrate do so within their regions. The weakest “magnet” for businesses are the voivodeships belonging to the least developed areas in Poland (Eastern Poland) and the Opole voivodeship, which undergoes a significant decline in population.

Local innovation systems (LIS) constitute a relatively new term as usually the discussion about the systemic approach to innovation has focused on the level of countries, and most of all - regions. In this article an attempt was made to assess Polish municipalities from the perspective of their potential for development of local innovative systems. The performed factor analysis allowed characterization of five types of institution networks which may impact creation and development of LIS. The study was completed with case studies in selected voivodeship cities as centres of the highest concentration of institutions usually building local innovation systems, three of which were capitals of the poorest regions in Poland.

Between 1989 and 2014, the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (one of the poorest regions in the European Union) was subjected to a number of external stimuli. However, not only has its position in the ranking of provinces failed to improve - it has actually worsened. Despite this, positive adaptive changes have occurred in the region, although they are limited in scope. The attitude of peripheral regions towards external stimuli can be quite reactive, as seen in the case of Warmia and Masuria. It can be assumed that the province’s smart specialisations (water economics, high-quality food, and wood and furniture) will contribute to further quality in the economic structure of the region, but it will not necessarily improve its position in relation to other regions in Poland.

This article deals with the topic of the local development factors within the value chain of the commune (gmina). The concept of the value chain examines development factors in three groups: the leader, the internal environment and the external environment; it also takes into account the time factor. This article also presents the usefulness of three theoretical and conceptual approaches in reference to the idea of the value chain: the theory of development path dependency, the network theory, and the concept of smart specializations.

The article presents the process and effects of the emergence of smart specialisations in the Silesian and Warmian-Masurian Voivodeships. The starting point is the analysis of smart specialisations in the context of the development theories, which is followed by a discussion of the specialisations of the two voivodeships. This leads to the establishment of several doubts concerning the future situation of the peripheral region presented in the article.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of pretreatment and different technological conditions on the course of ABE fermentation of rye straw (RS) and the composition of volatile compounds in the distillates obtained. The highest concentration of ABE and butanol was obtained from the fermentation of pretreated rye straw by alkaline hydrolysis followed by detoxification and enzymatic hydrolysis. After 72 h of fermentation, the maximum butanol concentration, productivity, and yield from RS were 16.11 g/L, 0.224 g/L/h, and 0.402 g/g, respectively. Three different methods to produce butanol were tested: the two-step process (SHF), the simultaneous process (SSF), and simultaneous saccharification with ABE fermentation (consolidation SHF/SSF). The SHF/SSF process observed that ABE concentration (21.28 g/L) was higher than in the SSF (20.03 g/L) and lower compared with the SHF (22.21 g/L). The effect of the detoxification process and various ABE fermentation technologies on the composition of volatile compounds formed during fermentation and distillation were analyzed.

The objective of this study was to obtain two types of fuels, i.e., bioethanol and biogas, in a sequential combination of biochemical processes from lignocellulosic biomass (corn straw). Waste from the agricultural sector containing lignocellulose structures was used to obtain bioethanol, while the post-fermentation (cellulose stillage) residue obtained from ethanol fermentation was a raw material for the production of high-power biogas in the methane fermentation process. The studies on obtaining ethanol from lignocellulosic substrate were based on the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) method, which is a simultaneous hydrolysis of enzymatic cellulose and fermentation of the obtained sugars. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (D-2) in the form of yeast cream was used for bioethanol production. The yeast strain D-2 originated from the collection of the Institute of Agricultural and Food Biotechnology. Volatile compounds identified in the distillates were measured using gas chromatography with flame ionization detector (GC-FID). CH 4 and CO 2 contained in the biogas were analyzed using a gas chromatograph in isothermal conditions, equipped with thermal conductivity detector (katharometer) with incandescent fiber. Our results show that simultaneous saccharification and fermentation enables production of bioethanol from agricultural residues with management of cellulose stillage in the methane fermentation process., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.