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There are not many comparative studies dedicated to value change in Eastern European countries. In our paper, we employ both longitudinal and cross- national analyses to describe and explore whether and, if so, how Eastern European countries have changed their values on the conservatism-openness to change axis. We are using the available EVS/WVS 1990-2009 data sets from Albania, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, East Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The main method employed is multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA); we are testing for measurement invariance (configural, metric and scalar) and then compare the means of the latent variables (values). We explore whether we can find overall value convergence or clustering of countries with more or less similar cultural heritages and economic developments or increasing entropy. Our findings suggest that there is neither an overall development towards convergence nor an overall development towards entropy that can be observed in Eastern Europe. What can be observed, however, are processes of partial convergence (i.e. convergence with respect to some of the values) in varying clusters of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-industry trade refers to the exchange of products belonging to the same industry. The term is usually applied to international trade, where the same kinds of goods and services are both imported and exported. The intra-industry share of manufacturing trade has increased significantly across many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries since the late 1980s. Central and Eastern European members of the OECD - especially the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary - are among the countries with high and growing intra-industry trade as a percentage of the total manufacturing trade. Recent years have also seen an increase in the intra-industry trade of these countries with China and the China Area, with special reference to China - Hong Kong and China - Macau. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the intra-industry trade phenomenon and its development during recent years between selected Central and Eastern European economies and the China Area, with special emphasis on the most advanced branches of textile and clothing manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]