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Climate change and environmental policies are widely discussed, but much less is known about emissions embodied in goods traded internationally, and the distinction between emission producers and consumers. The carbon dioxide emissions embodied in international trade in Central European countries are subject to examination in this paper. As a result of industrial restructuring and environmental legislation, air pollution has improved significantly in Central European countries since the 1989 transition. On the other hand, economic growth has been accompanied by a rise in consumerism. Despite the increasing role of exports, the Visegrad group countries have become net importers of carbon dioxide emissions between 1995 and 2008. This seems to be the 'standard trajectory' of a country's transition toward a more developed and consumption-oriented economy. The global patterns of carbon dioxide emissions embodied in manufacturing exports are also mapped, using network analysis and constructing 'product space'. The analysis confirms that industrial re-structuring played an important role in lowering the production of carbon dioxide emissions in the Visegrad countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this discussion paper is to examine the relevance of selected influential theoretical and conceptual approaches to regional competitiveness for specific geographical and institutional contexts of Central European (CE) regions. We argue that strategic documents and policies (both nation- and region-wide) in CE countries are based on un-critical applications of a few popular concepts of competitiveness that were originally proposed and mainly applied in Western European and US regions. Existing empirical evidence documents a strong role of exogenous factors of competitiveness in CE regions, the in-house character of firm innovations and weak demand for innovations, and other impediments of R&D collaboration. We suggest that these (and other factors) limit the applicability of concepts such as regional innovation systems and Porterian clusters in the context of many CE regions. On the other hand, we argue that some other concepts such as the global production networks perspective or related variety and economic complexity can provide some relevant and inspiring frameworks for analysing regional competitiveness in CE countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]