Key Sector Analysis: A Case of the Transited Polish Economy

The transition process from a centrally planned economy to a market economy started in Poland at the beginning of the 1990s. In this paper we try to answer the question in which direction has the structure of Polish economy changed, if indeed it has. By means of the key sector analysis applied to the Polish input-output tables that come from the period 1990–2000, we find that the structure of the Polish economy still remains characteristic of a centrally planned economy rather than a market economy. Although, in the last year of the period under study, the first improvement symptoms could be observed (the increased significance of services in the Polish economy) but there is still a lot of work to be done. An inefficient operation in the case of some sectors reaches a considerable level. This is reflected by the structure of the most important input-output coefficients, of which, the most important inputs are located on the diagonal of the sensitive matrix.