The role of the automotive industry in the economic transformation and reindustrialisation of old industrial regions (a case study of Czechia)

Within the broader context of the automotive industry’s dominance in post-communist Central European countries, the primary objective of this article is to determine whether this trend has also influenced old industrial regions (OIRs). The authors focus on the Moravian-Silesian Region and the Ústí Region, both belonging to regions that, due to its sectoral specialization, ranks among the most problematic in Czechia in terms of economic restructuring. The paper seeks to demonstrate the presence of both deindustrialization and reindustrialization within these OIRs. The dynamics of these processes are evaluated using data from business accounts. The primary data source consists of the main financial records of automotive businesses, even in cases where a company’s registered headquarters differs from the location of its production site. From a methodological perspective, the article also addresses the recalculation of business account data to individual production sites within a single company. The study focuses on one key proportional indicator of the economic performance of the automotive industry: value added per employee. The main finding is that the automotive industry plays a crucial role in both OIRs under investigation, but in terms of reindustrialization, there are various drivers affecting the differential dynamics of this process in both regions. At the micro-regional level, the automotive industry is spatially highly concentrated in both regions.