Abstract:The introduction of information technology into all aspects of our lives has brought forth qualitative and quantitative changes on such a large scale that this process has come to be known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0. The aim of this paper is to fill in the gaps and provide an overview of studies dealing with Industry 4.0 from the business and economic perspectives. A scoping review is performed regarding business, microeconomic and macroeconomic economic problems. Four investigators performed a literature search of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct. The selected period spanned from 2014 to 2018, and the following keywords were used for the search: Industry 4.0, economics, economic development, production economics, and financial sector. A total of 2275 results were returned. In all, 67 full papers were screened. Results obtained from the relevant studies were, furthermore, divided into the following categories: work and skills development; economy growth and macroeconomic aspect; sustainability; intelligent manufacturing; policy; and change in business processes. Findings show that the aspects of work and skills development, smart technology adoption, intelligent manufacturing, and digitalization are very well described. The government and its policies usually play the role of a needed supportive element. Usually studies lack a coherent view of the topic in question and solve partial questions.

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The article is focused on the international competitive position of V4 countries in the foreign trade of agri-food industry products. The V4 countries' accession to the EU significantly changed exporters and importers' situation in these countries, providing them with better access to numerous markets. Integrating them into the single internal market area promoted trade and resulted in an increase of intra-EU exports and imports. The agri-food products market strongly benefited from such an opportunity, which was significantly limited before 2004 by duties and quotas. The article presents changes in international trade in agri-food products in the V4 countries and their competitiveness. We employ share of the analyzed country in global exports (EMS), import-export coverage (TC), revealed comparative advantages (RCA), and the intensity of intra-industry trade Grubel-Lloyd Index (GL) to assess the competitiveness. Our results show that Poland performed the best in international trade in agri-food products among the V4 countries. The result was confirmed by partial indicators and the total competitiveness index.

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