The present paper presents a model of investment decisions made by corporations. The decisions in question are perceived as part of corporate strategies, defined in a behavioural way. The model attempts to integrate the classical microeconomics\’ point of view with that of the new institutional economics, formalizing the resulting assumptions on the grounds of three theories of games: Selten\’s, Harsany\i’s and Nash\’s. Corporate strategies are defined as a set of four games: the capital market game, the corporate governance game, the product markets game and the social responsibility game. The four games are played in parallel and in mutual interaction, each of them being a temporarily normalized sub-game of the Selten\’s extensive game with imperfect recall, and being played as a Harsanyi\’s game with imperfect information and various degrees of cooperation. In each of the four games the presence of Nash\’s dynamic equilibrium, manifested as a critical level of consistency in individual players\’ strategies, is of crucial importance. In presence of Nash\’s dynamic equilibrium, corporations orient their behaviour towards development, technological progress included. In the absence of Nash\’s dynamic equilibrium corporations would orient their strategies exclusively on managing risk.

Strength of country depends on its public\’s finance condition. Recentlymost of European\’s governments had a problem with the budget and the public debt. The same circumstances were in Polish public finance. In 2010 expenditures exceeded incomes, value of the budget deficit was about 45 billion zlotys. In compliance with ESA 95 standard the general government deficit reach almost 111.5 billion zlotys. That situation had impact to the public debt which amount 748.5 billion (the general government debt amount 778.2 billion zlotys). Although Poland had met convergence criterion, the public finance need reforms. In the article were presented three solutions. First of all, expenditures connected with the public administration and government consumption should be reduced. Secondly, reasonable cuts of benefits, especially unemployment benefits and groundless benefits, could bring savings which will be transferred to institution thatmanage the vocational activation. In the third place, the pension system needs intense reforms. System should be standardize and all of privileges have to be eliminated. Those solutions would be the beginning of greater changes.

The article presents the most important results of sociological research conducted in 2011 in 14 cities of the “Silesia” Metropolis (Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia “Silesia”). The study formed the basis of a thesis written under the supervision of professor Marek S. Szczepanski, defended at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Silesia in Katowice. The thesis won the ministry of regional development award in the competition “Teraz Polska Promocja 2011”. Themain focus of research is an analysis of the social reception of a new urban brand (“Silesia” Metropolis) in less than a year after the introduction of the corporate identity and launching the informative campaign. The study including questions on corporate identity, sympathy towards the new brand is followed by an in-depth analysis of plethora of themes, especially socio-cultural, political and economic background. Presented sociological studies are qualitative (expert interview) and quantitative (survey).

Technique for American options valuation, combining Least Squares Monte Carlo with Duan\’s model under the assumption that the volatility of the underlier can be described by GARCH(1, 1) process, has been confronted with simple binomial tree model. Results of comparison of model outcomes with market prices for ten different CBOE-traded stock options indicate that simple binomial model is superior to sophisticated GARCH-LSM method. The results hold regardless of option characteristics—“moneyness” ratio and time to maturity. Incorporating dividend in binomial model does not significantly alter the valuation outcomes. Detailed analysis shows also that for each of the methods pricing errors grow as the “moneyness” ratio decreases.