The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual assessment using the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) since 2006 shows that Vietnam’s national competitiveness has been relatively low. Globally, Vietnam has been in the middle of economies surveyed. Regionally, Vietnam has been in the middle of ASEAN countries. Regarding level of development, before 2015 Vietnam was in stage 1 (factor-driven), which includes ...

Over the past decades, financial markets have been integrated across countries while income inequality has increased in most countries. This paper studies the effect of financial market integration on income inequality and investigates whether the effect varies with the degree of financial market development. We find an empirical evidence that financial market integration and financial market ...

This paper emphasizes the role of labor market frictions, which is largely neglected in quantitative trade models that usually assume full-employment. Labor market frictions can contribute to a source of comparative advantage, thus affecting trade share, price, expenditure, etc. Unemployment and changes in unemployment rates play a key role in the calculation of changes in welfare. This paper ...

Previous studies that have identified the impacts of institutions or cultural traits on comparative advantage focused on goods trade, but not services trade. In contrast to the rapid increase in trade in services, empirical examination on sources of comparative advantage in services trade remains limited. This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating empirically the impacts of institution ...

At the current stage of globalization, Central Asia (CA) is becoming a focal point for the political and economic interests of global forces because of its rich natural resources and critical strategic position. From this point of view, the CA countries need to form a joint development strategy for solving regional problems and a strong mechanism for countering the main political and economic conflicts ...

This paper examines the role of global production linkages on exchange rate elasticities by using Korean firm-level data. At firm-level, foreign-owned firms or firms with foreign subsidiaries participated in the Global Value Chains (GVC) play an important role in weakening the effect of exchange rate movements on firm exports. We find that the exchange rate elasticities of firm exports are significant ...

Unlike a number of other advanced economies, South Korea has experienced a pronounced increase in both imports from and exports to China since the rise of China, which began in the early 1990s. This study analyzes how Korea’s exposure to China’s rise and, in particular, to changes in its imports from and exports to China have affected Korean manufacturing employment. Our 2SLS estimates show that, ...