FIR team will work on a project supported by the Visegrad Fund

Department of International Business of the Faculty of International Relations will act as partner institution within the research project “GVCs in Central Europe – a Perspective of Automotive Sector after COVID-19“ supported by the Visegrad Found.

The project has brought together the research teams from the University of Economics in Bratislava, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the Institute of World Economics, Budapest, and Prague University of Economics and Business. The list of international research team members includes Iveta Černá, Ph.D. and Eva Křenková, Ph.D. from the Faculty of International Relations.

The aim of the new international research project financed by the Visegrad Found is to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on the automotive industry in the V4 countries and to search for perspectives of improvement in the position of national SMEs in automotive GVCs. Besides the research focus of the project, the project team’s goal is to increase students’ knowledge in the field of global value chains.

The survey of university students enrolled for bachelors, masters, and doctoral study programmes showed that barely 40 % of students were aware of the possibility to quantify the trade from the perspective of value-added and where to find such data. By the same token, 65 % of students have not so far used any indicator of GVC participation. Three-quarters of respondents would be interested in details about international trade in relation to value-added. This gap will be filled by means of workshops for Ph.D. students as well as brand new case studies available to general public.