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Structural Change, International Trade, and Labour Markets in a Low-Income Country

Evidence from Vietnam

A GLM|LIC Research Project conducted by Dartmouth College

© istockphoto.com / quangpraha

The project consists of two parts.

The first part of the project seeks to understand the relationship between trade, employment, and productivity in a low-income country setting.  This topic is particularly timely in the context of recent bilateral free trade agreements and international trade negotiations, which aim to improve the trading prospects of low-income countries.  The project will study the consequences of export opportunities induced by the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement for employment and productivity of formal enterprises in Vietnam. This export expansion led to a relative reduction in household business employment and to the reallocation of workers away from household businesses toward employers in the formal enterprise sector in industries subject to larger U.S. tariff declines.

The current project builds on this existing evidence and will study the channels through which new export opportunities increased labour demand in the registered enterprise sector. The empirical framework will combine longitudinal firm-level data from the annual Enterprise Survey that covers all registered enterprises in Vietnam, with variation in industry-specific declines in export costs induced by the trade agreement. The project will analyse the impact of exporting on employment across heterogeneous employers and the relative contribution of incumbents and new entrants, such as private domestic businesses and foreign-invested firms, toward aggregate enterprise employment growth.  Labour reallocation across heterogeneous employers might have important implications for aggregate productivity. The channels through which the BTA might have increased aggregate industry productivity in the enterprise sector, including the role of reallocation of labour and market  shares across incumbent  firms, the  exit and entry of new firms, and firm-level productivity improvements.

During the 2000s, Vietnam experienced a significant decline in agricultural employment and expansion of employment in manufacturing and services, paralleled by a sharp reduction in the aggregate share of household business employment. The second part of the project will use comprehensive longitudinal data on individuals, workers, household businesses, and firms in the enterprise sector to document and analyse the reallocation of workers in and out of employment, across industries, and across heterogeneous employers over a decade of rapid growth in a low-income country setting.

This first component of this analysis will focus on the reallocation of individuals and firms between the household business and enterprise sectors, a margin of adjustment that has potentially important welfare and productivity implications in a low-income country setting, but is rarely observed. The study will consider the role of reallocation among incumbent workers across sectors, heterogeneous employers within sectors, and entry and exit from the workforce for the aggregate decline in household business employment, The study will further  examine whether the transitions of workers to the enterprise sector are short-lived or permanent during this period, and whether and how transitions between household businesses and enterprises vary with individuals’ demographic, educational and geographic location characteristics. The study will also examine entry and exit of household businesses, revenue and employment growth among the incumbent firms, and transitions of growing household businesses to enterprises using the household business module of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys spanning the 2000s. This will enable us to quantify the importance of transitions of household businesses to enterprises toward the expansion of the enterprise sector.

In continuation, the project will study employment  and productivity dynamics of firms in the enterprise sector using the Enterprise Surveys from 2000 to 2010. The analysis will consider the relative role of firm-level productivity growth among the incumbents and labour and market share reallocation from less to more productive firms for changes in industry productivity. The project will quantify the role of net entry and the differences in employment/productivity growth across firms in terms of initial productivity and size, and between foreign-invested, domestic private, and state-owned firms.

Overall, the project will provide comprehensive evidence on the microeconomic channels fuelling the growth of the enterprise sector in a low-income country setting.

Opinion Articles
For Richer, for Poorer on IMF’s Finance & Development

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Project Overview

  • Thematic AreaLabour Markets in Low-Income Countries
  • Tags
    EmploymentLabour MarketsTrade
  • Evaluated Country
    Vietnam
  • Principal Investigator Nina Pavcnik
  • Co-Investigator Brian McCaig

Related Publications

  • Working Paper No. 9 Informal Employment in a Growing and Globalising Low-Income Country
  • Working Paper No. 23 Out with the Old and Unproductive, in with the New and Similarly Unproductive
  • Policy Brief No. 4 Creating Formal Sector Jobs in Low-Income Countries

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