The lower Mekong Delta, one of the largest river deltas in Asia, is a landscape shaped by the waters of the Mekong River that flows, as last part of its long way from the Tibetan Plateau to the South Chinese Sea, through a dense river and canal network in the Southwest of Vietnam. People in this...

This paper compares the social norms of distributive transfers within village communities in the north and south of Vietnam by analyzing household survey and experimental data. The results of household data analysis show private transfers flow from high-income households to low-income households...

We use the Vietnam Living Standard Survey conducted in 1993 and in 1998 to analyze the determinants of private transfers among rural farmers. Private transfers are widespread and important relative to pre-transfer income levels of recipients in both years. Conducting parametric and...

Like other developing countries, Vietnam has attempted to push for greater fiscal decentralization in the hope of a more efficient delivery of social services to targeted citizens. The fiscal decentralization initiative is encouraging and merits pursuit, but the present study however, shows that...

Following extensive economic and market reforms and more than a decade of negotiations, Vietnam became the latest country to accede to the World Trade Organization in November 2006. While it is expected that greater liberalisation will boost Vietnam’s economic growth and contribute to the...

We use panel data from a household survey conducted in Vietnam to analyze the effectiveness of informal risk sharing arrangements in protecting household consumption from idiosyncratic income shocks. We focus on the effects of reported harvest shocks and of estimated shocks to agricultural...

Innovation has long been considered an important factor for creating and maintaining the competitiveness of nations and firms. The relationship between innovation and exporting has been investigated for many countries. However, there is a paucity of research in Vietnam with respect to this...

Vietnam has been quite sucessful in attracting FDI inflows since the inception of economic reform in 1986. The inflow of FDI has contributed significantly to the economic development of Vietnam. Still, the determinants of FDI inflow and its impacts on the economy of Vietnam are under-researched....

This paper complements earlier studies on ethnic minority underdevelopment in Vietnam by empirically examining the ethnic wage gap in the Vietnamese labour market, using data from a large-scale household survey conducted in 2002. The paper uses the ‘index number’ decomposition method...

We develop a framework for economy-wide modelling of value-added tax systems. Our framework models a number of complexities of VAT systems as they are implemented by tax agencies. In particular, we model multiple rates, multiple exemptions, multiple degrees of refundability across commodity...