The impacts of the economic crisis on the spatial organization of Hungarian industry

Abstract

Since 1989, foreign capital has played a significant role in the renewal of Hungarian industry and in the formation of new industrial spaces. The economic crisis that began in the autumn of 2008 has had a significant impact on the Hungarian economy, particularly for globalized, export-oriented industry. This paper examines the impacts of the crisis on Hungarian industry and the country’s industrial space. In particular, it is argued that those branches of the local economy most closely tied to the global economy, for example the automobile industry and electronics, suffered the most. Because these industries and the impacts of the crisis are typically concentrated in the northern Transdanubia area of the country, we can designate this as the core region of the crisis. Moreover, the crisis has brought into focus the spatial structural dichotomy of Hungarian industry and has also contributed – even if only temporarily – to alleviating regional differences. However, the new, semi-post-Fordist pattern of Hungarian industry has not been reorganized.