Abstract:
We document the emergence and growth of automotive clusters in and around Slovakia. The main target of this research is to investigate whether and how they spill over national borders. We also analyze how clusters and their transnationality affect firm competitiveness. The main result of our research is that although the emerging clusters have an impact on competitiveness of participating firms, it is not the transnational cluster linkages that matter at this stage of their life cycle. Linkages with firms in the same group in Central Europe still matter more for competitiveness than shared institutions arising from geographic proximity.