Whither dependency? The rise of the Visegrád countries’ billionaires

“Whither dependency? The rise of the Visegrád countries’ billionaires.” : This paper introduces and reports the first results of a research project on the emerging billionaire-entrepreneurs of the Visegrád countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). 

The increasing visibility of V-4 billionaire-entrepreneurs has largely happened under the radar of recent scholarship, and their economic activities – including increasingly significant outward FDI towards the West – seem to defy the dominant thesis of the Visegrád countries’ economic dependence on foreign capital. The project aims to map the origins, economic activities, internationalization strategies, and political connections of V-4 billionaire entrepreneurs who entered theForbes World’s Billionaires List. This paper provides a descriptive snapshot of 26 billionaires from three countries, Hungary, Poland, and Czechia, and offers first insights into the origin of their wealth and the importance of different privatization patterns. 

Speaker : Marek Naczyk (Oxford University)
Discussant:  Sonja Avlijaš (University of Belgrade)
Chairs: Hugo Meijer and Eugenio Sánchez (CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS)