What Role for the Central and East European Countries in an Enlarged European Union?
) Eastern European Economics, 2008, vol. 46, issue 5, pages 69-91 Abstract: A massive surge in foreign investment, beginning with the transition to an enlarged European Union, has contributed strongly to the automobile sector’s reorganization in Central and East European countries (CEECs). In an attempt to complement the essentially qualitative literature on the subject, this paper proposes an original empirical approach to evaluate the maturity of the CEEC automobile sector and its integration into the European automobile production network. Relying on six-digit-level disaggregated data on the CEEC automobile sector’s trade within Europe for the period 1993-2003, the paper analyzes the composition of trade as well as the evolution of the CEECs’ intraindustry trade (IIT). First, the results demonstrate that core CEECs no longer show any sign of a technological deficit or maturity gap vis-Ã -vis their partners from the ex-EU-15, with whom they reached high levels of IIT, whereas periphe
