Wage Differentials among Ownership Groups and Worker Quality in Vietnamese Manufacturing

Wholly foreign multinational enterprises (WFs), joint-venture multinationals (JVs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs) pay higher wages than domestic private firms in Vietnamese manufacturing. In large samples of medium–large (20+ employees) firms, conditional differentials accounting for worker education and occupation, as well as capital intensity, size, and shares of female workers, were substantially smaller, but positive and significant. Wage levels and differentials varied substantially among industries. Conditional differentials remained positive and significant for WFs and JVs in most of the 11 industries examined, but estimates of SOE-private differentials were insignificant in most industries. Robustness checks using 2007 data yielded similar results.