Trade liberalization, labor allocation and income dynamics in Vietnam ; Libéralisation commerciale, allocation du travail et dynamique des revenus au Vietnam

The objectives of the current thesis are to investigate evolutions of the labor market since Doi Moi and impacts from the international integration of Vietnam’s economy, with focuses on a distinction of formal and informal sectors. In the current state of the thesis, the impacts of the trade liberalization and the increases in the minimum wages of the domestic sectors are studied. Indeed, the latter factor, the increase in the minimum wages, can be also considered as a factor relating to the international integration as it followed Viet Nam’s commitments under the WTO accession. For the impacts of the trade liberalization, the thesis investigates the impacts on labor allocations between different types of employments including wage work in the formal sectors and household businesses as well as self-employments in manufacturing sectors. The impacts on income differentials across the types of employments are also exploited. For the impacts of the increases in the minimum wages, the thesis exploits the effects on the total employments, movements between the formal sectors and other types of employments, wage distributions within the formal and informal sectors and wage gaps between the two sectors at different percentiles. Chapter 1. Trade liberalization, labor allocation and income dynamics in Vietnam Abstract This study seeks to answer two inter-related questions for Viet Nam: (i) how trade liberalization affects the allocation of workers across self-employment, wage work in household businesses and wage work in the formal sector (private, foreign invested and state enterprises); and (ii) income differentials between these kinds of employment. An extension of the two-step model in Goldberg and Pavcnik (2003) and its modification are employed to answer the questions. Data is sourced from five Viet Nam Household Living Standard Surveys from 2002 to 2010 and available measures of the trade liberalization in Viet Nam. The results indicate that the trade liberalization does not have significant impacts on income ...