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.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate benefits to debt reduction by using the natural experiment provided by the debt relief programs: the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative launched by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1996 and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative extension in 2005. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply a time-shifted difference-in-differences strategy to evaluate the effects of this intervention. The date of each country’s decision to participate in the program is used as one treatment point while the date of the completion of the debt relief program is used as another treatment point. The exercise compares different economic outcomes such as domestic and foreign investment, schooling, and employment of the treated observations to the counterfactual of untreated country-years. The period between the decision and completion points is a short run while the period after the completion point is considered a long run. Findings – The authors found that debt relief increased capital investment as much as 1.63 percent in the short run and 5.79 percent in the long run. However, there was no effect on foreign direct investment suggesting that debt overhang does not affect incentives of foreign investors. Output and schooling enrollment increased both in the short and long run. Originality/value – This paper exploits a natural experiment of debt relief in a number of developing countries to shed light on the possible benefits to debt reduction. The authors are able to separate the short- and long-run effects of debt reduction. The finding that domestic but not foreign investment responds to debt reduction is suggestive of the differences in incentives across these two sources of investment.