Difficulties of catching-up in Central-Eastern Europe

Abstract

The dissertation and the included articles primarily conduct exploratory investigations, followed by synthesising the results to draw conclusions. In the dissertation and in the article, I apply numerous quantitative methods. Mostly, they are connected to the input-output table systems. The balance of inter-sectoral relations (BIR) plays a central role in the targeted connection. The research applied other data analysing tools and databases, such as processing the company level reporting data which were linked to the system of national accounts. In this way I was able to organise different data sources of the National Tax and Customs Administration and the Hungarian Central Statistical Office to a consistent system.Beside and strongly connected to the input-output table system, the sectoral level interpretation of the smile curve framework involves other methodologies. The key methodology is the adaptation of Antràs (2013) methodology for calculating upstreamness and downstreamness index. Aim of the research: Throughout my research, the question that lingered was how Hungary and the Central-Eastern European region are progressing on the trajectory towards catching up (or, conversely, falling behind). The exploration of parallels between the region's characteristic state of a middle-income trap and its economic structure emerged as an objective, with one less-discussed aspect being the examination of engagement with global value chains.