Dependent Growth

This study examines how the car industry in East-Central Europe (ECE) has grown since the 1990s. Many economists, industry specialists and national governments have judged that expansion a clear success. It was driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) from Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, which lifted economic output, produced thousands of jobs and reshaped the regional industry. The author argues that such accounts stop short of a fuller assessment, and offers a more critical view based on detailed research carried out in Czechia and Slovakia between 2009 and 2015. That fieldwork looked at assembly plants and the networks of component suppliers linked to them, and the analysis draws on global production networks and global value chains theory.

The book is organised around several central questions. It asks what role FDI played in the industry's rapid growth after 1990, especially during the 2000s, and whether it helped local firms move into more advanced activities. It also considers how far ECE has established itself in automotive research and development, how the 2008-2009 economic crisis affected the sector, and what part the state played in its development during the 1990s and 2000s. A further focus is whether foreign-owned firms create linkages with domestic companies and spread knowledge and benefits to them.