Tamas Gerocs is a PhD candidate in sociology at Binghamton University. He is also a research fellow at the Institute of World Economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research field is Eastern European semi-peripheries with a special regard for economic transformation in Hungary and other post-socialist countries, theoretical questions on semi-peripheral dependent development with respect to external financial dependencies, and asymmetric vertical specialization in the German automotive value chain. Gerőcs is also a member of the Budapest-based Working Group for Public Sociology “Helyzet.”