Una lettura delle dinamiche dell’industria automobilistica europea in termini di Flying Geese e di Sophistication Index

This paper deals with the evolution of automobile sector during the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Countries from a double point of view. At first, we wonder about the applicability to the sector of Flying Geese (FG) model, theorised by Kaname Akmatsu in the 1930s to explain export-driven development patterns in Japan, and neglected for a long time. Through the calculation of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA, or Balassa) index of import and export of a group of goods directly related to the automobile chain, we try to highlight the presence of sequences in the comparative industrial specialization of CEE Countries, from lower to higher sophisticated goods, connected to the European landscape, and on the consolidation of a regional hierarchy for this industrial sector. Secondly, we reframe the whole investigation to check the robustness of this hierarchy using a sophistication index approach, both in the product (PRODY) and in the country (EXPY) version Some final remarks highlights the role of Italy with respect to the hierarchy emerging both from RCA and Sophistication index analysis