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This paper focuses on TFP analysis in the context of the impressive reforms of the ease of doing business in Vietnam using a novel and unique micro dataset of manufacturing enterprises between 2000 and 2010 for the analysis. The first phase of the reforms (2000-2005) observed the implementation of business start-up simplification, and the central governance of business regulations was decentralized to provincial authorities in the second phase (2006-2010). Results of this research are as follows. First, on average, larger firm-size and higher TFP growth rate were mostly observed in manufacturers at the TFP frontier (the fourth quartile of TFP). Second, the average ratio of female workers was higher in leading TFP manufacturers than in less productive firms in low-technology industries, especially in the second phase of the reforms. Third, the TFP catch-up of the least productive firms to the frontier firms was faster in the second phase (2006-2010) compared to the first phase (2000-2005) across all industries and economic regions. However, larger TFP gaps still existed in high-technology industries. Last but not least, the first-difference estimation of panel data comprising 63 provinces (in the second phase of the reforms) shows that local governments that performed better in the ease of doing business significantly fostered provincial manufacturing TFP in either for upper or lower productive provinces in Vietnam. Furthermore, a province gained significant spillovers from nearby elite provinces with leading productivity.

AbstractWe develop a model of endogenous growth with automation to study the impact of industrial robots on growth and labour income. We incorporate human capital accumulation into that framework to examine the role of human capital in sustaining growth without displacing low-skilled labour. While automation replaces low-skilled labour with industrial robots in conducting routine tasks, horizontal innovation creates new varieties in which low-skilled labour has an employment advantage. Labour-augmenting technology takes place to improve productivity of low-skilled labour. As such, those latter types of innovation help counterbalance the adverse effect of automation on low-skilled labour. Human capital, the essential production factor that takes part in every economic activity, including conducting non-routine tasks, accumulates over time through education and training. We show that there exists a long-run equilibrium at which either robots or low-skilled workers are employed, together with human capital, to produce varieties. In the fully endogenous model, final output grows at the rate of human capital accumulation. An improvement in the quality of education and training leads to an acceleration of both automation and variety expansion, but not human capital growth. Our numerical exercise indicates that a permanent increase in automation entails a permanent impact on the range of automated varieties, long-run output level and human capital wage. The shock lowers long-run growth and low-skilled workers' wage and their effective income share. However, it has no effect on the effective income share of human capital.