Restructuring the Central and Eastern European Automobile Industry: Legacies, Trends, and Effects of Foreign Direct Investment

Abstract

A U.S.-based geographer investigates the course and outcome of major transformations occurring in passenger car and truck manufacturing in the Central and Eastern European countries, based on nationallevel statistical data. To illustrate the diverse “starting points” for each country's automobile industry in a new market environment, he outlines the development of these countries' automobile industries under state socialism, and its repercussions for change in the 1990s. The paper then examines the uneven nature of automobile-industry restructuring, both in sectoral and spatial terms, and the role of foreign direct investment in the process during the 1990s. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F21, L20, L62. 11 figures, 9 tables, 132 references.