International Competitiveness

Jochen Lorentzen
Additional contact information
Jochen Lorentzen: Prague College of the Central European University

Chapter 3 in Opening up Hungary to the World Market, 1995, pp 91-150 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Most studies on international competitiveness of the CPEs focus on the technological quality of Eastern European exports to the West and go into all kinds of comparisons with the NICs. Technology, of course, is only one factor affecting competitiveness. But the literature on the CMEA has largely refrained from references to, for example, cultural attitudes to explain the quality or quantity of production in Central Europe. The difference of the Eastern European worker from the committed (Confucianist and Shintoist) Japanese automobile worker or the disciplined, hardworking Korean shipbuilder surfaced only when the CPEs embarked on their transition and ran into major difficulties: the reforms in Russia are stalling, one is informed, because the orthodox Russian farmer is not up to it. Predictably, not everybody agrees. ‘The idea that East Europeans need to be taught the basic facts of economic life was always absurd. Forty years of rationing, shortages and thriving black markets were an excellent course in elementary economics — better, perhaps, than a century or two of capitalism whose beneficiaries take the miracle of supply and demand for granted’ (‘Pioneers of capitalism’, 1992). Individual attitudes clearly do influence national (and, for that matter, regional) production processes.

Keywords: Market Share; Export Performance; International Competitiveness; Much Favoured Nation; Commodity Group (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-23870-5_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349238705

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-23870-5_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().