Industrial Tradition and Economic Convergence

This book contributes to the existing literature on economic backwardness, foreign direct investment and its embeddedness in the economy (by carrying out the comparative analysis of the automotive industry in the Czech and Slovak republics), as well as to the interconnection of the theories of economic backwardness and FDI embeddedness. It proves that the development of the Slovak and Czech automotive industries based on path dependency has been decisively influenced by the factor of industrial tradition. The book argues that, unlike the conventional explanation of its role, in the context of the Czech and Slovak automotive industries of 1989-1998, the presence of industrial tradition has been the source of slower labor productivity and GDP growth and therefore the source of the catching up in a negative sense. As it is demonstrated in the book, the combination of two factors - industrial tradition and transition models - has been the primary source of continuing economic convergence of the Czech and Slovak republics in 1998-2014.