Patrick Dieuaide

Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Automobiles and Finance in Central and Eastern Europe

Over the last 15 years two huge economic events have shaken Central and Eastern Europe: the shift from a command to a market economy in the mid-1990s, and the global financial crisis at the end of the 2000s. Within a very brief period of time, most working people in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were first exposed to liberalization or privatization and in many cases began to work directly for companies based outside their own countries. Then they were subjected to the consequences of the collapse of the world financial bubble.

Globalizing Employment Relations and Crisis: Multinational Companies and Central and Eastern European Transitions and Transfers

The 1990s witnessed the conjuncture of two major economic events: the financialization of global capitalism and the entry of this new, highly mobile capitalism into the Central and Eastern Europe command economies. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) experienced an unprecedented rapid explosion of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), whose associated risks were lowered significantly by the 2004 and 2007 European Union (EU) accessions of first eight and then two more of the former communist states. Hundreds and then thousands of multinational corporations thus invested in the region either to take advantages of its highly skilled but low-cost labour supply or to position themselves to take advantage of opportunities (many created by massive privatizations) to access rapidly growing local markets.