Do trade agreements increase Vietnam's exports to RCEP markets?

The paper reviews recent developments in trade relations between Vietnam and members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, and analyses the impacts on Vietnam's exports of tariff reductions in RCEP trading partners. The margin of tariff preferences is adopted as a proxy for the degree of trade liberalisation and a gravity model is used to assess the impacts of the tariff preferences under the AFTA and ASEAN+1 FTAs on Vietnam's major exports. The results show that the effects of tariff preferences differ between the types of preferences and products. The FTA tariff preferences do not exert a stimulating effect on the export of agricultural products but they have positive effects on several manufacturing exports such as garments and footwear.     

The cash-holding link within the supply chain

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Using a customer–supplier matched sample of US-listed firms from 1980 to 2016, we study the corporate cash-holding relationship between...     

Measuring the Connectedness of the Global Economy

We develop a technique to exploit forecast error variance decompositions to evaluate the macroeconomic connectedness embedded in any multi-country macroeconomic model with an approximate vector autoregressive (VAR) representation. We apply our technique to a large global VAR model covering 25 countries and derive vivid representations of macroeconomic connectedness. We find that the US exerts a dominant influence in the global economy and that Brazil, China, and the Eurozone are also globally significant. Recursive analysis over the period of the global financial crisis shows that shocks to global equity markets are transmitted rapidly and forcefully to real trade flows and real GDP.     

The sensitivity of efficiency scores to input and other choices in stochastic frontier analysis: an empirical investigation

Journal of Productivity Analysis - Productivity and efficiency analysis have gained substantial attention in many industries over the last two decades, and stochastic frontier analysis has been one...     

Trade and employment in Vietnam: how firms' trade matters

This paper aims to analyse how employment and wages change when a firm's trade status is altered. Using a detailed firm-level dataset of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises, the study finds that how firms trade matters for firm employment and wages in Vietnam. The average effect of one-way trading (exporting or importing) is positive for both firms' total employment and female employment. Direct trading activities are associated with a higher level of employment than indirect trading activities by firms. The female employment effect of direct exports is nearly three times higher than direct imports. Indirect imports hurt firms' total employment and female employment. Both direct and indirect two-way traders experience higher growth in firm employment than direct-only traders. However, it is interesting to note that indirect two-way trading activities have a positive impact on female employment. Furthermore, the commencement of direct import is also associated with greater labour cost advantage.     

Micro insights on the pathways to agricultural transformation: Comparative evidence from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural income growth on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by agricultural income growth. This study provides a comparative analysis of the patterns of micro-level changes that occur among small-holder farmers in Uganda and Malawi in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia (SEA). Our analysis provides several important insights on agricultural transformation in these two regions. First, agricultural income in all examined countries is vulnerable to changes in precipitation and temperature, an effect that is nonlinear and asymmetric. SSA countries are more vulnerable to these weather changes. Second, exogenous increases in agricultural income in previous years improve non-farm income and trigger a change in labor allocation within the rural sector in SEA. However, this is the opposite in SSA where the increase in agricultural income reduces non-farm income, indicating a substitution effect between farm and non-farm sectors. These findings reveal clear agricultural transformation driven by agricultural income in SEA but no similar evidence in SSA.     

Internet use and agricultural productivity in rural Vietnam

The use of the internet is growing rapidly and has become an engine for economic development. However, few studies have examined the impact of internet use on agricultural production, and the results are not yet conclusive. Employing a dataset of more than 2000 observations in rural Vietnam, our study analyses the impact of internet use on agricultural productivity using the heteroscedasticity-based instrument approach suggested by Lewbel, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2012, 30, 67–80 and examines the heterogeneity and distribution of the impact using quantile regressions. Our results show that internet use has significant and positive effects on agricultural productivity. However, these effects are heterogeneous across population groups. The positive effects of internet use are stronger for households with a lower level of education, with a young and female head, and from ethnic minorities. The benefits are also found to be skewed towards the group of farmers at the bottom of the productivity distribution. Therefore, we propose facilitating the diffusion of the internet, since it not only boosts agricultural productivity, but also reduces productivity inequality. In addition, we recommend promoting rural education, supporting local markets, investing more in irrigation systems, and facilitating farm mechanisation as these factors are found to contribute to increasing agricultural productivity.     

Impacts of switching from business households to enterprises on the financial performance

Portuguese Economic Journal - This study aims to elucidate whether switching from business households to enterprises brings higher financial performance than not switching. The study was carried...     

The impact of work and non‐work migration on household welfare,poverty and inequality

This article estimates the impact of work migration and non‐work migration on per capita income, per capita expenditures, poverty and inequality in Vietnam using data from the two most recent Vietnam Household and Living Standard Surveys. We find that both work migration and non‐work migration have a positive impact on per capita expenditures of migrant‐sending households. Non‐work migration significantly decreases the incidence, depth and severity of national poverty. The effect of work migration on poverty is much smaller. Still, while work migration does not lift people out of poverty, it makes their poverty less severe. In addition, both work migration and non‐work migration decrease inequality, albeit only very slightly.