Two-fifths of the household enterprises that operated in Vietnam in 1993 were still in business in 1998, after five years of rapid economic growth. Constrained by lack of education, credit, and effective demand in poor areas, and squeezed by the lure of wage labor in rich areas, household...

In Vietnam almost a quarter of adults worked in nonfarm household enterprises in 1998. Based on household panel data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys of 1993 and 1998, the authors find some evidence that operating an enterprise leads to greater affluence. The data show that nonfarm...