Suchergebnisse

Agriculture and food cultivation production remains a key sector in the Vietnamese economy in terms of productive activities, income generation, and national export earnings. Higher world market prices should therefore in principle have a beneficial impact on rural farmers. This is based however on the assumption that world prices are transmitted and that farmers have the capacity to respond. In addition, many poorer farm households may be net consumers. Using data from the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) and the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) combined with available macro-data, this paper investigates how global price changes appear to have impacted on rural welfare in Vietnam during 2006-12. In this paper we study the case of rice in Vietnam, in the context of the 2008 food price spike. We analyse the responses of domestic producer and consumer prices, and discuss the policy actions taken by the government to help reduce the impact on consumers, as well as to continue to encourage production. We also look at the distributional impact of the resulting domestic price changes, using data from a specialist rural household survey to look at production response. Vietnam was effective in taking policy actions to limit the extent of transmission of the world price changes; and more poorer households benefitted from the price increase than lost.

Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises - the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global trade. Its success contradicts its characterization as an example of export-led growth and highlights the role of the state, particularly in maintaining and influencing investment. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around each crisis, and actions by the government to counteract that dependence and bolster the domestic economy while continuing to restructure the economy toward greater emphasis on the private sector. Growth, employment and poverty alleviation have been maintained at the expense of renewed inflation, larger budget deficits, and currency depreciation. The stop-go nature of present macroeconomic policy is the consequence of balancing growth versus inflation, responding to severe external shocks and holding to a growth objective in the face of substantial internal and external criticism.

This paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers' agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly increase their investment in land improvement as a result of relatives moving into public office. Connections to office holders appear to be important for investment because they strengthen de facto land property rights and improve access to off-farm employment and to informal loans. The findings underline the importance of informal networks for economic behaviour in environments with developing institutions and markets. They also suggest the presence of an untapped potential for economic development: if households without connections could obtain equally strong property rights and access to credit and insurance as the well-connected households, investment levels would rise substantially.