Over the past two decades, Vietnam's public spending increases rapidly from 14.2% of GDP in 1991 to 20.2% of GDP in 2010. Additionally, since Vietnam resumed its relations with community of international donors, inflows of ODA have numerously supported government's spending; Vietnam's economic growth rate has reached 7.3% on average. The question is whether the rise in public spending will expedite the national economic growth or the national economic growth will push public spending up. This paper looks into the causal relationship between public spending and economic growth. The research model is developed from the comprehensive production function wherein public spending is split into two components (i.e. budget spending and ODA spending) with a view to evaluating how efficiently public finance resources are allocated. Simultaneously, trade openness, private investments and labor force are treated as control variables. With the data set of the period 1990-2010 and the Granger causality test in the multivariate VAR model, the research finds that the model is statistically significant and the two-component public spending has a unidirectional causal relationship with economic growth. Another significant finding is that public spending does not have any relationship with private investment. Eventually, based on findings, some solutions and policy implications will be recommended.

In order for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop sustainably in a harsh competitive business climate and closer economic integration, it is important to improve the quality and effectiveness of accounting practice in SMEs. The quality of accounting practice, to a certain extent, directly and sharply affects the effective governance of enterprises in general and SMEs in particular. Thus, the crucial point is how to develop an accounting model that is suitable to the governance capacity and various sizes of SMEs and can produce transparent and adequate accounting information for users on the ground of harmonizing benefits and costs. The paper looks into accounting models corresponding to the size of Vietnam's SMEs and accordingly facilitates their accounting practice in the context of incessant fluctuations in size.

Studying effects of seasoned equity offering on stock prices is one of the trends in testing the semi-strong form of the efficient market hypothesis. Researches worldwide have produced remarkable results but no research on this aspect in Vietnam is found. This paper presents results of a pilot research in HCMC stock market in 2010: issues of seasoned equity on the HoSE make the stock prices fall drastically two-four days before the ex-rights (XR) day, especially the issue of subscription rights. The prices also fall remarkably within two or three days after the XR day, especially in case of issue of shares as payments for dividends or bonuses. Moreover, the stock prices rose strongly on the XR day for most fields, except for realty and agricultural businesses. After the issues, number of stocks enjoying lower degrees of risk is equal to the number of stocks facing higher degrees of risk.

Although Vietnam's accounting standards were first promulgated in 2001, only a few researches on the application of these standards and influential factors were carried out. This paper aims at examining such influential factors in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Đà Nẵng. Results of the research show that only a small proportion of accounting standards are implemented by Đà Nẵng SMEs. Regression analysis also shows that competence of accountants is one of important factors that affect the application of these standards. Closer investigation by tax agencies and requirement for audited financial statements may produce favorable impacts on the application of accounting standards among Đà Nẵng SMEs

Ho Chi Minh City has always been a pioneer in the development of industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs). Apart from its achievements, the city is now facing unsolved problems and challenges. Therefore, proposing consistent solutions to these problems helps the IPs-EPZs play well their pioneering role in industrialization and modernization in HCMC

"The role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is to help the government make macroeconomic regulation, correct market flaws, support economic reforms as well as develop infrastructure, and beef up national defense and security. This research aims to evaluate their role in the aforementioned groups of objectives based on four aspects, namely institution, development strategies, management and industry structure of SOEs, thereby determining the aspects to be restructured. The research result shows that SOEs have been playing well their role of making macroeconomic regulation and repairing market flaws, due to their big share in investments and involvement in numerous industries. However, they have not performed well in economic reforms in terms of mobilizing external capital, facilitating input conditions for other industries, maintaining economic growth, and improving the balance of trade. Even worse, they have produced crowding–out effects on other sectors. The success and drawbacks of SOEs stem from the following aspects, namely institution, development strategies, management and structure of industry. Based on their achievements and shortcomings, the research proposes restructuring SOEs in such a way that maintains their capacity to make macroeconomic regulation, correct market flaws, and improves their role in economic reforms, national defense and security. The restructuring should be conducted on four aspects: institution, development strategies, management and structure of industry."

This study investigates local fisherpersons' perception of the marine reserve in Nha Trang Bay and their life satisfaction after this marine reserve is established. Through 81 random interviews with local fisherpersons who have been dwelling in the Nha Trang Bay Marine Reserve, most of interviewees do not hold the belief that the marine reserve would improve their living standards after a decade of establishment even though they are well aware of the fact that the reserve would have positive impacts on the recovery and conservation of natural environment. The cumulative logit model shows that the life satisfaction of younger fisherpersons or households with larger male labor force is higher than that of experienced fisherpersons or households with a small number of male workers.