Revisiting Exports and Foreign Direct Investment in Vietnam

Since 1986, Vietnam has undertaken various reform measures in the trade and foreign investment area. This paper finds significant contributions of world trade, and competitiveness and liberalization effects to Vietnam's export growth over the period 1997–2008. Vietnam's exports became more competitive and better complemented the import demand of Vietnam's trade partners. In addition, dynamic comparative advantage became evident in many products, but significant room remains for improving export competitiveness. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows also increased and helped stimulate Vietnam's exports. FDI inflows have increased in both the short‐ and long‐term, yet are only of a limited magnitude. This necessitates more effective measures to enhance the linkages between FDI and domestic enterprises.     

The Expansion of High School Education in Poor Regions: The Case of East Nusa Tenggara,Indonesia

This paper explores the continuing labour market dilemmas resulting from the expansion of upper secondary and higher education in Indonesia. The situation is more acute in the poorer provinces such as East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) with their limited demand for high school graduates. The findings presented here are based on a sample of 800 high school students in the West Timor region of NTT. The authors point to the problems inherent in the Indonesian government's goal of nine years' compulsory education by the year 2004, and suggest policy measures to avoid the wastage of talent in provinces such as East Nusa Tenggara.     

Acquisition of organizational capabilities and competitive advantage of IJVs in transition economies: The case of Vietnam

Using Vietnam as the context, the study empirically examines how the competitive advantage of international joint ventures (IJVs) in transition economies is affected by the acquisition of resources from foreign partners and of local market-based resources. Our study contributes to the nascent literature on IJVs in transition economies by producing several novel and interesting findings. First, it demonstrates the need to modify certain arguments of the resource-based view (RBV) when applied to IJVs in transition economies. This paper shows that the peculiar market characteristics of transition economies serve as an imitation barrier turning even property-based resources into sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Second, the positive impact of knowledge-based resources on the IJV’s competitiveness seems to be significantly enhanced as the ownership by the foreign parent increases. Lastly, competitive advantage of IJVs appears to be strengthened when the transfer of property-based resources is complemented by that of knowledge-based resources, and when the transfer of internal, firm-specific resources is complemented by that of external, market-based ones. We believe that these findings make significant, incremental theoretical and empirical contributions to both the RBV and IJV literatures.

Bargaining with endogenous information

This paper analyses information acquisition in ultimatum bargaining with common values. Because of an endogenous lemons problem the equilibrium payoffs of the agents are non-monotonic in the information cost. The mere possibility of information acquisition can cause no trade although the agents maintain symmetric information in equilibrium and the gain from trade is common knowledge. The agent responding to a take-it-or-leave-it offer may capture some or even the full trading surplus in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium. The implications for sequential bargaining are discussed.     

Creative Batik Motif Design Based on Local Cultural Art and Natural Environments

Local arts, culture, and natural environment of Indonesia had their own uniqueness. They might be explored to help and to develop batik industry in Indonesia, especially in motif aspect. It was necessary to help craftsmen to create new and innovative batik products. The study was conducted as an effort to motivate batik craftsmen in developing batik industry through production of creative and unique batik motives. First study question： What are artistic motives of local arts and culture of natural environment of Yogyakarta and Central Java able to give distinct and characteristically local styles？ Second was how to create creative batik inspired by local arts and natural environment.     

Accounting conservatism and banking expertise on board of directors

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Previous studies show mixed evidence of the role of banking expertise on the board of directors on accounting conservatism. In this paper, we add to...