This research focuses on the determinants of Vietnam’s outward FDI by studying simultaneously the influence of two pull factors and push factors. In addition, the work examines the differences in assessing the impact of two factors groups on investment decisions by market entry method. The authors conduct qualitative research interviewing six experts as the managers have an important role in the decision to invest directly abroad for their business and quantitative research by multiple regression methods studying samples consisting of 248 enterprises. Push factors group from Vietnam includes competitive pressure of Vietnam market, monetary policy, interest rates of Vietnam, regulations and procedures for licensing investment abroad of Vietnam, incentive policy, and investment incentives to overseas. Pull factors group from host country includes culture–geography, macroeconomics and market, infrastructure, regulations and policies related to investment. Through two groups of factors, the authors withdraw into four groups that impact the Vietnam’s FDI abroad including: (i) culture–geography, (ii) infrastructure; (iii) the macro-economic and market; and (iv) regulations and policies related to investment. The results indicate that two groups of factors, both pull factors and push factors, have impact on Vietnam’s FDI abroad.

The government struggles to fight escalating food safety issues in Vietnam. However, government measures yielded little evidence of improvement to domestic food safety. For that reason, consumers lower their trust in the government. The current market context, and low trust towards the government left consumers to count on their own judgement for the sake of their own food safety. This study applied choice experiment method based on Lancastrian consumer theory and random utility theory to elicit consumers’ preferences on traceable safe foods and the perception regarding food safety. The impact of food safety related attributes was identified in the order of decreasing magnitude: freshness, label, traceability, certification, and price. Results suggested that Vietnamese consumers adhered food quality to food appearance (i.e. freshness) and made judgement with such perception. This paper also highlighted a noticeable reverse impact of the level of food certification on consumer preferences toward safe choices, which contributed to the current food safety situation in Vietnam. The reason was expected to be trust issues in the government, the impact of food safety context, and consumers’ false perception of food safety. To enhance trust, food traceability appears to be an indispensable and potential instrument. Besides, traceability information should be addressed via food label precisely to augment visual inspection as well as to increase its effectiveness. Additionally, consumers are willing to pay a price premium for traceable products, thus inducing suppliers to participate in food traceability. Nevertheless, the government must play a more proactive role in market supervision and education to facilitate the development of food traceability.

Supplier selection is a significant phase of procurement. However, a little systematic research on supplier selection criteria in the textile and apparel industry has been conducted in Vietnam. The purpose of this study is to identify criteria that constitute to the supplier selection decision of purchasers. An integrated approach involving purposeful sampling and theoretical sampling is used. Qualitative data are collected via expert interviews from 20 companies ranging from spinning to textiles to garments as well as ancillary industries in both southern and northern Vietnam. The data are analyzed using NVIVO 8.0 software. We assume that exploring the extant supplier selection criteria used by Vietnamese textile and apparel companies will contribute to the literature concerning procurement in particular and supply chain management in general.

Floriculture is an important agricultural sector of Lam Dong province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The favorable climate conditions of Lam Dong province have led to the strong development of the floriculture sector, while high demand due to lifestyle changes in Ho Chi Minh City promises a potential market for the cut orchid industry. The adoption of modern technology is vitally important for small-scale producers, because it not only improves the quality but also increases the yield of flower production. However, very little research has been conducted on the adoption of technology in the floriculture industry at the farm level. A sample of 228 producers was therefore collected in Lam Dong province and Ho Chi Minh City in 2018 to investigate the current status of, and influential factors for, technology adoption by floriculture producers in the South of Vietnam. Conditional mixed-process probit models were applied to examine decisions on the adoption of technologies associated with greenhouse, irrigation and seedlings in floriculture. The results reveal that farmers have strong preferences in terms of modern floriculture technologies and that demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education and income, as well as farm size, learning process, farmers’ perception of technology and market information are the key determinants of technology adoption in floriculture

To maintain the Philippines’ competitive edge in the trading of agricultural products, this study identifies factors that significantly influence the Philippines’ participation in the mango global value chain. The study employs a causal research design with panel regression analysis using pooled regression, a fixed effect model and a random effects model and determines the robustness of the models using the Hausman test. The resulting fixed effect model reveals that gross domestic product, remoteness and global competitiveness have a significant positive effect on gross exports and value-added, while being land-locked and bilateral distance have a significant negative effect. Among the identified variables, remoteness has the greatest influence. The resulting model is limited to the analysis of the Philippine mango global chain’s integration in terms of gross exports and value-added contribution to the economy of the country. The underlying factors not included in the model are not given emphasis. This study identifies the factors that correctly estimate the Philippines’ mango global integration. The policy recommendations, if implemented, can guarantee strong integration of Philippine mangoes in the global chain, which will facilitate the flow of factor payments in the economy, thereby raising the standard of living of Philippine citizens and creating more social protection for the Philippine people. Previous studies have been conducted describing the Philippine global value chain integration, but these studies are limited in that they use descriptive analysis and did not identify the factor/s that will improve the mango global value chain’s integration.

Using panel data along with the application of Pooled OLS, FEM, and REM estimates, this study conducts an investigation into the effects of a series of factors, namely state ownership, size, tangible assets, growth, return on assets (ROA), effective tax rate, and liquidity, on capital structure of 165 HCMC-based equitized state-owned enterprises (SOEs), categorized into three groups over the 2008–2012 period. As suggested by the findings, tangible assets, ROA, and liquidity are negatively related to leverage ratio and short-term debt ratio for the three groups of enterprises. In terms of firm size, there exists a positive correlation with leverage ratio and short-term debt ratio for Group 1 and 2 but a negative correlation with short-term debt ratio for the case of Group 3.

Based on the theories on quality and efficiency of public investment and on the ground of a new economic model, this study carries out an analytical assessment of the management of Vietnam’s public investment, with the primary aims to detect limitations on management, carry evaluation of the investment, and propose solutions to improving its quality and efficiency. The findings indicate that both the public investment quality and efficiency of Vietnam reveal certain limitations, and no evidence can be found for the effectiveness of investment expenditures in short terms, although a long-term relation exists between the public investment and economic growth. A few comprehensive solutions to investment enhancement until 2020 are as follows: (i) Rationally adjusting investment structures and portfolios, (ii) Improving institutional environment; (iii) Controlling investment efficiency; and (iv) Modernizing the monitoring system for the public investment.

Formal economic institutions are incentive-motivated mechanisms under the control of the government and are widely accepted as an important factor shaping investment behavior. However, the relative significance of aspects of formal economic institutions has remained ambiguous, especially in a developing economy like Vietnam. This paper aims to fill this gap through the investigation of the influence of formal economic institutions such as market entry, property right protection, anti-corruption mechanisms, and informal charges on private investment across provinces in Vietnam. The empirical results suggest that the deregulation of market entry is essential for private investment. By contrast, both property right protection and anti-corruption mechanisms have unexpected outcomes as their improvements are detrimental to private investment. The effect of informal charges is consistent with the prediction of the rent-seeking hypothesis.

This paper examines the relation among corporate governance practices, pyramid ownership structure, and firm value by using a sample of Vietnamese listed firms. Using a sample of 103 non-financial firms listed on HOSE for the period from 2012 to 2014, and employing two-stage least square regression (2SLS) to deal with potential endogeneity, we find that some indicators, commonly adopted as a key components of corporate governance, such as size or independence of board of directors, are imperfect proxies for corporate governance practices. Our results indicate that it is better to employ a corporate governance index (CGI), including 117 criteria developed by Connelly, Limpaphayom, and Nagarajan (2012) since it allows for more comprehensive estimation of corporate governance. More interestingly, our results show that the pyramid ownership plays an important role in the effect of corporate governance on firm value. The results are consistent regardless of whether companies have high or low family ownership.

Inequality between men and women in the labor market is one of the issues that is of great interest in labor economics. The sticky floor effect occurs when the gender wage gap widens at the lower tail of the wage distribution. The glass ceiling effect in wage exists if the gender wage gap at the top of the wage distribution is wider than other positions. This study uses the dataset of VHLSS2014 and adopts quantile regression to investigate the existence of glass ceiling and sticky floor in the Vietnam’s labor market. The overall results obtained of the entire sample show that there is sticky floor effect but no glass ceiling in the Vietnam’s labor market. However, the results are different when it comes to each labor group. In terms of urban and rural areas, the sticky floor exists, but the glass ceiling does not in both areas. In terms of state and private sectors, while the glass ceiling exists in state sector, the stick floor is only present in the private sector.

Public capital spending positively contributes to economic growth and development in many countries worldwide. However, questions concerning the importance of inflation in the public investment–growth relationship are of great interest. This study examines the role of inflation in the public investment–growth relationship in Vietnam using the two-step GMM Arellano-Bond estimators for a balanced panel data of 52 provinces during the period of 2005–2014. More interesting are the empirical findings. First, inflation significantly increases the volume of public capital spending. Second, public investment and inflation enhance economic growth, but their interaction term impedes it. Third, private investment, government recurrent expenditure, and trade openness are the significant determinants of growth. These findings suggest some important policy implications related to public capital spending and inflation in developing countries, specifically the Vietnam government.