Academic literature on the topic 'Woolen goods industry Europe'

Abstract This article discusses China’s attempts to industrialize from the late nineteenth century until the Japanese occupation of 1937. It focuses on the woollen industry and uses data from industrial investigations, market information and company archives. Several attempts to build a woollen industry from the 1880s to the end of the First World War failed. However, in the 1920s and 1930s some private companies in Tianjin, Shanghai and the Yangzi Delta succeeded in managing profitable woollen workshops and mills. An export-based carpet industry was developed in Tianjin while a network of workshops and integrated mills flourished in Shanghai and the Yangzi Delta to supply woollen goods for civilian clothing in the Chinese urban markets. This article aims to contribute to the debate of China’s late industrialization by looking at the structure of the woollen industry and its alignment with actual consumer demands.

In the history of Bukovinian social life in the 1840–1850s, an important role is played by the fierce struggle for the introduction of rail transport. This struggle took place in the deepening crisis of the feudal system and the development of capitalism in the Austrian Empire. Primitive medieval methods of transporting goods and passengers by waterways and unpaved roads, which for centuries met the needs of feudal Bukovyna, became a brake on the economic, social and political progress of the Bukovyna region. The beginning of the transport revolution in England had a huge public response in Austria-Hungary. The rapidly developing relationship between scientists and engineers from Austria, Western Europe and America in this period made a large contribution to the process, as the newest means of transportation were spreading in the early 19th century, first of all, in the industrialized regions of Europe. These regions had enough funds for the construction of roads because they could develop different methods of production. Today we are mostly interested in the projects of construction of typical means of transportation on agricultural lands with practically no industry. In the early 19th century, Bukovyna was one of them. The purpose of this article is to thoroughly analyze unpaved roads of the late 18th – early 19th century, as well as the project of the first wooden trackway as the forerunner of the Bukovyna railways. To achieve this purpose, the authors first reviewed how railways were constructed in the Austrian Empire during 1830s – 1850s. Then, in contrast with the first railway networks that emerged and developed in the Austrian Empire, the authors made an analysis of the condition and characteristics of unpaved roads in Bukovyna. The government's attention to Bukovyna's roads was explained by their military, economic and political significance for the Austrian Empire by the end of the 18th – early 19th century. There was a number of state trackways built on the territory of Bukovyna which crossed the region and ensured the military interconnection of two Austrian provinces named – Galicia and Transylvania, as well as approached the borders of the Russian Empire and the Danube principalities. At the same time, they helped to restore the suspended trade flow in Bukovyna. In addition, the authors considered the first attempt to create a wooden trackway as a prototype and predecessor of the Bukovyna railway. It is evident that such an idea played a significant role in shaping the development strategy of the region in the minds of Austrian and Bukovinian officials, and became a forerunner for main and regional railways in Bukovyna.

In the XIII – XV centuries medieval Europe has made progress in trade and transition to market economy, which resulted in the foundation of a number of Venetian and Genoese overseas colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea area. The stability of Pax Mongolica had a positive effect on long-distance trade with the Central and Eastern Asia and India. In the XV century the goods from the Eastern Europe prevailed over those from the Central and Eastern Asia, especially the slaves. In exchange the Venetians and the Genoese imported cotton, woolen, and silk fabrics, raw cotton, rice, soap, glass, ceramics, jewelry and swords. The stabilization in the region and the rise of trade was a trend running through the first half of the fifteenth century. The 1430s were the time of the greatest prosperity of the Venetian trade in the Northern Black Sea during the whole fifteenth century.

Sporting goods industry is a multibillion industry including apparel, gear and equipment. Beyond that, it is currently under flux of change. Disruptive actions cause emergence of new trends on which stakeholder must stay keen. This study analyses consumers’ economic, and technological trends within the sporting goods industry among different markets and stakeholders. Stakeholders such as businesses, organizations and consumers are shifting towards advanced sporttechniques, hence the sporting goods industry faces tremendous challenges and changes. The empirical part of the research was conducted with quantitative research methodology utilizing descriptive and analytical approaches. Data was collected from credible secondary data sources such as international institutions, governments, and databases. Data analysis was elaborated with help of descriptive methods and statistical tests.

AbstractThe interconnection of Eurasia through logistics chains using rail transport as the main mode of transport brings many opportunities for EU member states with Chinas economic potential. Accelerating the import of goods and semi-finished products into domestic industrial production from China by railway may pose a risk to the economic performance of countries that depend on industrial production and its structures.

Promotion of an integrated approach for industrial policy at European and national levels is crucial to ensuring the future competitiveness of the European Union and to raise growth potential. Essential for economic success and economic recovery of the European Union is an integrated single market, which creates an attractive environment for business, production of goods and services. Industrial modernization, investing in innovation, new technology, production inputs and skills, increased productivity, efficient use of resources and goods and services with high value added are prerequisites for achieving Europe's comparative advantage in the global economy. The main source of industrial future and competitiveness of the European Union are becoming investments in innovation and key technologies that redefine global value chains, make more efficient use of resources and redesign the international division of labor.

Industries are consuming more than 27% of the total generated energy in the world, out of which 50% is used by different machines for processing, producing, and assembling various goods. Energy shortage is a major issue of this biosphere. To overcome energy scarcity, a challenging task is to have optimal use of existing energy resources. An efficient and effective mechanism is essential to optimally schedule the load units to achieve three objectives: minimization of the consumed energy cost, peak-to-average power ratio, and consumer waiting time due to scheduling of the load. To achieve the aforementioned objectives, two bio-inspired heuristic techniques—Grasshopper-Optimization Algorithm and Cuckoo Search Optimization Algorithm—are analyzed and simulated for efficient energy use in an industry. We considered a woolen mill as a case study, and applied our algorithms on its different load units according to their routine functionality. Then we scheduled these load units by proposing an efficient energy management system (EMS). We assumed automatic operating machines and day-ahead pricing schemes in our EMS.

The Polish packaging industry has been developing dynamically in recent years, and it is the largest packaging market in Europe with estimated value of EUR 6 billion, i.e. 2% of Poland's GDP. The key macroeconomic factors responsible for the growth of the Polish packaging market are: socioeconomic situation, international trade in goods, production of packaged goods, demographic and market factors. An analysis of the above factors points to the high potential and prospects of the Polish packaging market.

The article presents the results of external analysis of consumer goods sector in Ukraine, one of the largest in Europe which offers a wide range of products: fabrics, garments and knitwear, shoes, hosiery items, natural and artificial fur, leather goods, garment accessories, porcelain, etc. which to a great extent underpins the socioeconomic situation in the society and the state of the national security. However, in recent years the Ukrainian consumer goods industry is facing a large-scale protracted systemic crisis that translates into the ongoing manufacturing decline in major products; the domestic market is almost 90% filled with illegally imported goods and products; at the same time, up to 80% of domestically produced goods are exported onto foreign markets (mainly the European ones). An emphasis is put on critical importance of consumer goods industry in the Ukrainian economy since it contributes to creating new jobs, enhancing the domestic products competitiveness and increasing fiscal inflows to state and local budgets, etc. To assist management entities in their goal setting, the study employs a structured logical framework of a cognitive analysis of the consumer goods market to explore the relationships and interactions within the external and internal environment, as well as identifies the key economic, legal, technological and sociocultural factors of environmental effects on consumer manufacturing performance in Ukraine. Based on the PEST analysis results, weighted estimates to assess the macroeconomic environment factors of consumer goods industry have been provided using a proposed scale with regard to each factor significance indices, since for each of the four groups a different number of these factors have been determined.

The article considers features of the East Asian machinery-building cluster. It differs from the older machinery-building clusters in West Europe and North America primarily. The share of intermediate goods in the imports of the East Asian countries is higher than the share of such goods in their exports. This results from prevalence of the assembly manufactures in their industry. The international supply chains of the region are described as follows: manufacturing parts and components in the countries of East and South-East Asia – assembly in China – exports to USA, Europe and Japan. The changes in the structure of the international supply chains in 2007–2011 are shown in the case of telecommunications industry. It is established that the structure of the telecommunications imports of the USA has changed in favor of China. The technological level of the telecommunications equipment exported from China enhanced significantly. The share of parts and components in China’s telecommunications exports increased. Imports of telecommunications equipment from Japan to USA diminished whereas its delivery from China to Japan more than doubled. This points to reduction of the role of Japan as the supplier of telecommunications equipment in the world scale.

AbstractThis chapter traces a forgotten, yet important itinerant means of livelihood, namely rag collecting. Rags played an essential role as raw material for the paper and textile industries in the nineteenth century. The chapter identifies a business logic based on the idea that material perceived by one individual as worthless could be turned into something of economic value. As rags were commodified, they acquired new value in a different context. By analyzing newspapers, periodical articles and responses to ethnographic questionnaires, the authors follow a group of rag collectors from the Karelian Isthmus, who utilized their favorable geographic location to gain a livelihood from a circular flow of goods. The chapter demonstrates how an earthenware pot could be bartered for a discarded garment, which in turn became a piece of the puzzle in the process that kept industry and economic growth going.

Abstract3D personal data is a type of data that contains useful information for product design, online sale services, medical research and patient follow-up.Currently, hospitals store and grow massive collections of 3D data that are not accessible by researchers, professionals or companies. About 2.7 petabytes a year are stored in the EU26.In parallel to the advances made in the healthcare sector, a new, low-cost 3D body-surface scanning technology has been developed for the goods consumer sector, namely, apparel, animation and art. It is estimated that currently one person is scanned every 15 min in the USA and Europe. And increasing.The 3D data of the healthcare sector can be used by designers and manufacturers of the consumer goods sector. At the same time, although 3D body-surface scanners have been developed primarily for the garment industry, 3D scanners’ low cost, non-invasive character and ease of use make them appealing for widespread clinical applications and large-scale epidemiological surveys.However, companies and professionals of the consumer goods sector cannot easily access the 3D data of the healthcare sector. And vice versa. Even exchanging information between data owners in the same sector is a big problem today. It is necessary to overcome problems related to data privacy and the processing of huge 3D datasets.To break these silos and foster the exchange of data between the two sectors, the BodyPass project has developed: (1) processes to harmonize 3D databases; (2) tools able to aggregate 3D data from different huge datasets; (3) tools for exchanging data and to assure anonymization and data protection (based on blockchain technology and distributed query engines); (4) services and visualization tools adapted to the necessities of the healthcare sector and the garment sector.These developments have been applied in practical cases by hospitals and companies of in the garment sector.

This chapter provides a thorough exploration of trade between Britain and Northern Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It studies the bulk rates of goods imported and exported; the way trade operations differed depending on the goods involved; and the variety in shipping across regional ports. It documents how the coal, wine, timber, and corn trades operated in Northern Europe and Britain. It compares British shipping with neighbouring French, Dutch, and Baltic shipping. It concludes by stating that Baltic products were of increasing demand during the period, and that Anglo-Baltic trade grew at the expense of Dutch-Baltic trade, which damaged Anglo-Dutch relations.

Commerce was a driving force behind colonialism. As empires expanded and developed, they fuelled the skyrocketing of world trade. In the flows of goods and capital that this entailed, European industry – processing colonial commodities or producing manufactures for colonial markets – played a crucial role. Factories, such as the rice mills of the Dutch Zaan region that processed and re-exported rice from colonial Burma and Java in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thus became the focal points for such trade relations. In the mills’ nomenclature and public relations efforts, the new, eye-catching factories were constructed as the high-tech centres of imperial trade relations, linked to traditional colonial agriculture in what was portrayed as a productive, harmonious whole.

Abstract Chapter 1 describes the role of Jewish traders, merchants, and companies in the unfolding of the South African mining industry, their motivations, and the importance of kinship branches in Europe to Jewish commercial connections. Jews in the Northern Cape, already proficient in local and long-distance trade, performed in contact zones, i.e., in spaces of colonial encounters between native Africans, migrant communities, Boer farmers, and immigrants from a host of different countries. They thrived in this commercial milieu and carved out a niche in buying, selling, and shipping rough stones to colonial markets. The chapter also analyzes the process of company amalgamation and centralization. A number of structural factors came together: access to investment capital, Jewish family connections in Europe, and the global increase in demand for luxury goods.

This chapter reflects on a range of examples of pre-capitalist societies, chosen to illustrate the major arenas of colonial disruption, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and to show how they worked. The empires which Europe created in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were merely the last (to date) in a long line of imperial ventures. There were few areas in the world which had not previously been subject to overlordship by external forces, sometimes to the suzerainty of successive powers. However, these old empires often functioned quite differently from the newer empires created by Europe. The growth of capitalism in Europe drove a need for closer control over the type and extent of production in areas under imperial domination. Whereas in previous empires merchants had merely served the demands of wealthy minorities for luxury goods (and in the process accumulated hoards of personal wealth), now these stocks of wealth began to go directly into the transformation of productive processes in Europe (the Industrial Revolution) rather than into consumption. Thus the emphasis was increasingly on raw materials or intermediate inputs to European industry.

Europe is the most touristic continent in the world, receiving more than 50% of all international tourists (Santolli, 2017) according to the World Tourism Organization. People from all over the world want to go to the most famous tourist attractions in Europe and what once seemed a distant dream to international tourists due to the high prices of hotels and air tickets, is now possible thanks to the competitive prices of international airlines such as Ryanair, Vueling and EasyJet (O’Connell & Williams , 2005) and the alternative to traditional accommodation providers: collaborative economy platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway or Wimdu. This short research paper will be focused on this type of platform, which provide mainly hosting services, and the legal aspects of their terms and conditions of service. The collaborative economy in the tourism industry is a growing business model, which allows consumers around the world to rent a spare room, an entire house or an apartment, for a short period of time, at a lower price than the accommodation offered by the traditional service providers such as hotels. However, this phenomenon was not born as a trending idea or an alternative way of getting an extra income, but of the pure necessity of generating cash in a period when the economy was stagnating, and the owners of properties needed to be creative with the available resources. The collaborative economy is characterized by generating economic benefit (Botsman & Rogers , 2010) from assets that would otherwise be given little or no use by their owners or holders. However, the concept of ‘resources’ covers much more than just assets, since resources can refer to spaces, skills and any kind of goods, which, if not made available to the collaborative economy, would be largely unused.

Recent economic, social and environmental concerns have drawn attention to the necessity to rethink our consumption patterns (Barnes & Mattsson, 2016) and call for alternative forms of consumption. In parallel, digitalization dramatically changes the way we live, work, consume and travel (OECD, 2020). As a result, new consumption practices have emerged in the last years, privileging access over ownership (Botsman & Rogers, 2010). Those practices, labelled as sharing economy or collaborative consumption (Belk, 2014; Benoit et al., 2017; Botsman & Rogers, 2010), involve most of the time peer-to-peer exchanges (for a fee or for free) that are coordinated through community-based online services (Hamari, Sjoklint & Ukkonen, 2016). Such collaborative services have recently boomed, impacting many sectors, including the hospitality and tourism industry (Sigala, 2017), with well-known initiatives such as Airbnb or Couchsurfing. Peer-to-peer accommodation services are transforming the tourism industry (PWC, 2015) by enabling consumers to share and access goods escaping traditional services like hotels and travel agencies. According to Hotrec (2014), peer-to-peer accommodation is twice bigger than the conventional tourism accommodation industry in Europe. The World Bank Group estimates a 31% annual growth of this new accommodation type between 2013 and 2025, which is six times bigger than the annual growth of the conventional bed and breakfast and hotel industry. In total, peer-topeer accommodation makes up about 7% of accommodation worldwide (Bakker & Twining-Ward, 2018). Two of the most sucessful sharing economy unicorns, AirBnB and Couchsurfing, have very different business models. Airbnb is an online peer-to-peer marketplace that matches hosts wishing to share their home with travelers (i.e. guests) who are looking for accommodation. Valued at 38 billion USD (Forbes, 2018), Airbnb has more than 60 million customers and around two million accommodations in the world (OECD, 2016). At the opposite, Couchsurfing is a free online hospitality exchange network that connects travelers looking for a place to sleep with people offering their ‘couch’ for a couple of nights. The community gathers around ten million members around the world.

The influence of institutional pressures on standards and standardization are readily apparent in their most direct form. For example, in the mid-1990s, both the European Union and the United States issued new wireless communications licenses in the 1.8-2.0 GHz band: the EU countries mandated use of their decade-old communications standard, while the U.S. authorized three competing standards not yet widely used in the U.S. (Mehrotra, 1994). However, institutional pressures can also shape standardization efforts in a less direct fashion. For example, in a regulated industry such as telecommunications, existing economic and political institutions constrain the diffusion of a new technology. Such diffusion mediates the impact of product compatibility standards upon society. If producers adopt standards for their goods and services, and if users adopt the products that incorporate such standards, only then such standards can have an economic or social effect upon society at large. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of institutional pressures on diffusion of the innovation that incorporates a standard if we wish to explain the eventual success or failure of such a standard. Here a particular standards-based innovation, analog cellular telephone service, provides an opportunity to contrast the effects of institutions on diffusion and thus standardization. Over a four year period, three independent design centers deployed mutually incompatible standards in three continents. While the technical solutions were similar, differences in institutional context between the regions influenced both the nature of the respective standards and their corresponding diffusion. In particular, the systems were deployed in a period of shifting telecommunications competition policies and priorities for radio frequency allocation. Prior research has examined the causal links between standards and institutions, both the institutional context of standards development (e.g., Besen, 1990) and also how established standards themselves function as institutions (Kindleberger, 1983). But rarely do we have the opportunity to examine the diffusion of the same innovation in differing institutional contexts. This paper will focus on the most complex institutional context for the deployment of cellular telephone service, the United States, which despite having invented cellular technology, was the third region to deploy cellular service due to regulatory delays. The experience of Japan and Northern Europe are offered as contrasts to highlight the importance of the institutional context in the adoption of both standards and standardized products.

When things go well then often it is because they conform to standards (ISO, 2005). According to the Oxford Dictionary of Modern English, there is a lot of explanation of what standard means, but, in context of the first sentence, the best meaning is «standard is a thing or quality or specification by which something may be tested or measured». Personal computer is a standardized computer. It means that any of its components is made according to strictly defined specification. Consequently, it does not matter who produces components and where they are produced. Industry put the first demand for standards. Especially standardization is extremely important for electronics, for information and communication technology (ICT), and its application in different areas. Nowadays developing of standards is organized on global, international level, but it exists also on national level, well harmonized with international one. Developers of standards are organizations and groups working on this matter. The leading standard developer in the world is International Standards Organization (ISO). ISO is a nongovernmental organization established on 23 February 1947. Its mission is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity (ISO, 2005). ISO collaborates with its partners in international standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), a non-governmental body, whose scope of activities complements ISO’s. The ISO and the IEC cooperate on a joint basis with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), part of the United Nations Organization and its members are governments. The ISO standard can be recognized by the ISO logo, ISO prefix and the designation, “International Standard”. European developer of standards is the European Committee for Standardisation (Comité Européen de Normalisation – CEN). It was founded in 1961 by the national standards bodies in the European Economic Community and EFTA countries. CEN promotes voluntary technical harmonization in Europe in conjunction with worldwide bodies and its partners in Europe and the conformity assessment of products and their certification (CEN, 2005). CEN cooperates with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Product of this cooperation is the European standard which can be recognized by the prefix EN. Any added prefix to the existing one, for both ISO and CEN standard, means that this standard is result of cooperation with other standardization group or organization. The prefix ENV in European standardization means that this standard is not yet a full standard (it is under development by CEN). ISO and CEN have Technical Committees working in the specific areas. ISO/TC215, established in 1998, and CEN/TC251, established in 1991, are corresponding technical committees working on standardization in health and medical informatics in ISO and CEN. Both standardization bodies, the ISO and CEN cooperate, and they mutually exchange their standards. There are also a variety of organizations and groups developing standards, cooperating with ISO and CEN or acting as administer and coordinator in standardization. For example, there are Health Level 7 (HL7), Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), non-profit organization that administers and coordinates the U.S. voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system, etc.

The New industry strategy for Europe puts the single market at its core, as one of the fundamentals of Europe’s industrial transformation. To make the single market work for all, EU law puts in place common rules to eliminate barriers and facilitate the circulation of goods and services across the EU. These rules can give the expected effects only if their application is ensured. In the field of services, there is great potential that could be realized by better application of existing and adoption of new rules on key instruments for ensuring freedom of movement of services, namely the Services Directive and the Directive on the Recognition of Professional Qualifications. This is the reason why the paper pays attention to the mentioned directives, but primarily through the analysis of the rules contained in other related documents that should ensure proper implementation of rules on services that are already in force. These are the rules that regulate the procedure of notification of requests for access and provision of services, define the principle of proportionality and a single contact point, in a more complete and somewhat different way than it was done before.

Over the recent decades, the changes in the paradigm of international trade have been observed. As the result of decreasing of trade barriers as well as the reduction in trade costs allowed companies to divide their production into stages and to locate it in different countries according to their competitive advantage. Eventually, the production process has become more fragmented, both geographically and vertically. It means that intermediate products are shipped across boarders many times and every exporting economy provides some value added according to its competitive advantage. As a result, global value chains have become one of the most important feature of international trade. Following (Gereffi & Fernandez-Stark, 2011), in this study global value chains are defined as “the full range of activities that firms and workers do to bring a product from its conception to its end use”. Humphrey and Schmitz (2002) pointed out four types of upgrading in global value chains: product, process, functional and chain. Product and process upgrading involve companies retaining their positions in global value chains by enhancing productivity gains through adopting new product processes or “new configurations of product mix”. Thus, functional upgrading involves a slicing up the global value chains into new activity which generates higher value added, e.g. own brand manufacturing. In turn, chain upgrading involves a going up to new activity, which needs higher skills and capital and value added. Milberg and Winkler (2013) offered similar classifications of upgrading. Production fragmentation has caused a rapid increase in trade in intermediate goods as often companies offshore an intermediate stage of production process. Offshoring production has been typical to manufacturing (Timmer, et al., 2012), however, services have been often overlooked, but play a major role, especially in supporting global value chains (Kommerskollegium 2013). In turn, Digital Silk Road, announced in 2015, has become a significant part of Chinese Belt and Road Initiative strategy. China has implemented this strategy as a part of its long-term technological plan, under which China provides support to its exporters, including many well-known technology companies and builds a network of cooperation with selected countries in the field of technology, including ICT infrastructure, services, 5G networks, e-commerce, etc. China's rapid technological changes must not go unnoticed by trading partners, including analysed European countries, which, to maintain international competitiveness, are increasing the technological advancement and enhancing market protection against Chinese technology. Until recently, the value added from China to European countries was concentrated mainly on medium technology industries and value added from Europe to China focused more on advanced goods and services. Nowadays, there is a redirection of Chinese value added to high-tech activities (including service activities), which reflects China's ambition to build an economy that leads to innovation and industry 4.0. The transition of the CEE states’ economic and political systems initiated in the early 1990s, earned them the EU membership in 2004. The accession to the EU’s structures meant that these countries achieved the free-market economy status and they should be treated as the full member of the global business networks. Moreover, the decline in trade costs (transport and transaction), greater openness of their market and the removal of trade barriers have all helped the CEE states to join global value chains. Hence, the CEE economies are going to be more heavily involved in global production linkages. Many empirical studies have presented the close and dynamic integration of these countries with the EU market (especially the EU-15) and in a more limited scope with the whole global economy as well (Behar and Freund 2011). Generally, democratisation, the strengthening of political and economic relations (particularly with the EU), and the modernisation of many sectors (including financial sector, more advanced industries), were common elements of the CEE countries long-term development policies. One of their priorities was the redirection of foreign trade towards the EU and joining the global production linkages where China has become the core producer. Recently, the role of the economy in global value chains is more determined by the advancement of value added that it offers. Companies move toward services and innovations in the business model (Nenenen & Storbacka, 2010) and introduce industry 4.0 (Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, 2016). A symptom of these novelty is a concept of servicification of manufacturing (Neely et al. 2011) and cross-sectoral connections, which have reconstructed traditional global value chains (Naude et al. 2019) and, together with Industry 4.0, is expected to change the landscape of global manufacturing. As a result of facilitation of manufacturing, economies placed in the downstream market can improve their role in global value chains. In Europe, this can be an opportunity for most Central and Eastern European countries. Analyzing changes in CEE’s role in technological global value chains, we should take into account its two most important value-added suppliers: China and Germany, as well as their most important value-added buyer - Germany. These three economies established a sort of value added flows triangle. The regional supply chains built by Germany in the CEE allowed it to maintain a comparative advantage in sectors important for the economy, while helping the CEE countries join global value chains, positively influencing economic growth, but also reducing them to entities operating in less advanced stages of production (Jacoby, 2010; Fortwengel, 2011). Today, Germany also cooperates strongly with China (as a result of Digital Silk Road), and the CEE economies (especially the Visegrad Group) are increasingly dependent on Chinese value added, still linked to German value added. The most visible connections can be found in automotive and electronics. Hence, the question is: how strong are these links in servicification of manufacturing and whether there are visible trends in value-added flows in between this triangle in the era of industry 4.0 and Chinese Digital Silk Road. The research question seems to be relevant, thus in the subject literature, little is known about the mentioned relations (Roland Berger, 2021). The research method based on the analysis of data from the OECD Trade in Value Added databases, containing the world input-output tables for the period 2005–2018. The system of balance equations in the input-output model for one economy has been adopted to a multi-economy model. The model is described in more detail in (Koopman et al. 2013 or Hummels et al, 2001) and is based on the decomposition of gross exports. The method includes not only estimates of total value added in global value chains, but also calculations at both the mezoeconomic level and cross-sectoral flows of value added (including servicification of manufacturing). The results of analysis showed that most relations between economies continued to deepen the imbalance in flows of value added. The CEE economies are making their manufacturing increasingly dependent on advanced services (both from Germany and China). On the other hand, the share of CEE services to Chinese and German manufacturing is decreasing or remains steady. However, some trends could be observed in the last years, especially between Germany and China. German manufacturing is starting to rely more on Chinese value added (information and communication technologies services and the subgroup computer programming, consultancy and information services activities in manufacturing, information and communication technologies services' value added in transport equipment), although previously Germany provided more of these services to China. In telecommunications in manufacturing between CEE and Germany, the trend has turned against CEE. However, there was no direct compensation between pairs of economies, but the decrease in German value-added flows to China resulted in a much larger increase in value-added from China in German manufacturing. If the presented changes in flows were to reflect the effectiveness of Chinese industry 4.0 and Digital Silk Road. These strategies serve their purposes and increases not only the advancement of Chinese value-added exports, but also makes important economies dependent on this added value. On the contrary, the industry 4.0 strategy in CEE has not improved its position in the triad. Germany has still a strong position as a provider of value added, but its dependence on foreign value added is high, which derives from the links with CEE.

In this paper we will show how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected one of the sectors that have undergone a booming development in recent years, namely the sector of dental medicine. This is an industry that includes numerous and diversified activities: treatments and surgical interventions in dental practices and clinics, dental aesthetics interventions in luxury clinics, the organization of specialization courses, conferences and congresses, the development of extremely innovative procedures and materials. Dental tourism has also had a spectacular trend, especially in Eastern European countries. Within a very short period of time, this highly profitable field, but which presents a huge risk of transmitting potential viruses, has recorded significant financial losses. In March 2020, in some European countries a lockdown was imposed by governmental decree or ordinance, all private practices having ceased their activity, whereas in other countries a significant number of clinics closed on their own initiative, and those remaining open recorded a staggering decrease in the number of patients. Courses, conferences, and congresses have been cancelled one after another throughout Europe. As a result of the cancellation of many flights, the activity in the branch of dental tourism has ceased almost entirely. For two months, an extremely small number of medical units, especially hospitals, were reorganized to provide care in dental emergencies, according to a very strict protocol to limit the risk of contamination. In view of resuming their activity as of May, professionals in the sector had to meet several severe protection conditions, regulated by institutional documents by the National Orders/Colleges of Dentists. In October, in the face of the second wave of the pandemic, the governments of European countries took less restrictive measures in an attempt to avoid a new lockdown and the decrease in the supply of goods and services to the population to such a great extent, so this time, governments have not closed private practices, despite the fact that in some countries the beginning of November has brought about a new isolation – albeit a partial one – and a renewed closedown of some businesses. We will analyze, in the context of the ongoing pandemic, the situation of this sector in several European countries. Given that the demand for dental services has only decreased very little, professionals in the sector have tried in various ways to continue their work so as not to sacrifice the dental health of the population. The risk/benefit ratio is very hard to manage in this field, so precautions, prevention, and protection measures in dental practices remain of the utmost importance. If the branch of organization of courses, conferences, congresses can compensate to a certain extent the sharp decline in revenues during the lockdown period by moving the activity on online platforms, the branch of dental tourism is still suffering massively, and the possibilities of recovery are greatly reduced. Dentists remain the most exposed to risks. They are facing medical and financial concerns and have to make final treatment decisions amidst an uncertain and dangerous situation