CEE Countries in Europe: Toward Center or Periphery in Global Value Chains

Preface

China-CEE Institute had announced “Call for Proposal” research programs in December 2018. One of the proposed research projects is “CEE countries in Europe: toward Center or Periphery”. What we are presenting here is the result of the research project, conducted by a consortium led by University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), together with scholars from University of Belgrade (Serbia), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zeland), Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary), University of Warsaw (Poland), and Shanghai University of International Business & Economics (China). The project title is “CEE Countries in Europe: Toward Center or Periphery in Global Value Chains”.

This project, from the angle of global value chains (GVCs), analyzes embeddedness and impact of the CEECs in the European and global economy via position and dynamic within GVCs in terms of so-called core-periphery dynamics. Special attention has been paid to structural positions and changes of individual CEECs within the GVCs as networks. The research is developed based on two datasets. One is the TiVA database provided by the OECD and the WTO, which provides GVC indicators for eleven CEE countries (CEE-11) and at the same time also EU member states, namely Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The other dataset is the Eora MRIO database to cover the other 5 CEECs (hereafter referred to as CEE-5), which includes Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania. The corresponding time for research is 2005-2015 period. According the overall findings, the extent of GVC participation is fairly high for most of the CEECs. Among the CEE- 11, GVC participation is the highest in Slovakia and lowest in Croatia. Among the CEE-5 countries, the so-called supply chain trade represents the highest share in gross exports of Serbia and North Macedonia, while it is lowest in Albania. In line with the general global trend. The peak in terms of the importance of supply chain trade in CEECs was reached in 2011 and 2012, while the stagnation in the GVC importance has been witnessed since the year 2012.