Browsing by Subject "convergence"

Thirty years after the fall of communism, the post-socialist countries find themselves in a state of economic dependency. The main argument of the thesis is that the Visegrad Four (V4) countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) operate in an FDI-led growth model, characterized by strong presence of foreign capital (especially in export-oriented manufacturing sector), but a low level of knowledge spill-overs from foreign-owned sectors to those in domestic ownership, which constraints the productivity growth of the domestic-owned enterprises (the so-called dual economy). Integration into the global economy, conducted in the V4 countries mainly through ties with Germany, was initially highly beneficial, however, it is increasingly becoming a constraint on further development, illustrated e. g. by the inability to achieve full convergence to EU-15. The aim of the thesis is to describe how did the FDI-led growth model developed in the V4 countries between 1990 and 2019; what was the political discussion of the growth model; and the differences in these two spheres between the V4 countries. This is studied on two levels: the FDI-led growth model itself (described using a set of macroeconomic indicators); and analysis of the political discussion. The conclusion is that the V4 countries differ both in terms of development of the FDI-led growth model (the biggest outlier is Poland, which is less reliant on foreign investment then rest of the group), and in terms of the political approach to the model (especially Poland and Hungary after 2010 take active steps to limit the impact of the FDI dependency; the Czech Republic and Slovakia are more or less aware of the dependency, but take no interventionist measures). Given the high levels of economic growth in Poland and especially Hungary after 2014, there is most probably a causality between the efforts to limit the dependency and the economic development (although other factors, such as the size of the economy, play a role too). However, it is also argued that unlike certain level of economic nationalism, populism is not a prerequisite for limiting the dependent growth and in the long run can actually be harmful to economic development.