Trung Thanh Nguyen

Leibniz Universität Hannover · Institute of Environmental Economics and World Trade

Supporting agricultural cooperatives might contribute to the livelihood improvement of many small-scale farmers in developing countries. This research examines the factors affecting the internet use of agricultural cooperatives with a focus on female leadership, its effects on cooperatives' economic, social, and innovative performance , and the dis...

Early sowing of wheat has been proposed as an important crop management practice for reducing the threat of terminal heat stress – a threat which is likely to increase under climate change projections for the Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) of South Asia, home to more than 400 million people. However, to date there is little empirical evidence for the im...

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether the participation in land rental markets helps to mitigate impacts by climate change on multidimensional poverty in Thailand and Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach The authors use precipitation data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and self-reported shocks from the Thail...

The use of the internet is growing rapidly and has become an engine for economic development. However, few studies have examined the impact of internet use on agricultural production, and the results are not yet conclusive. Employing a dataset of more than 2000 observations in rural Vietnam, our study analyses the impact of internet use on agricult...

Land consolidation is important to increase the economies of scale in farming, and understanding its determinants and effects is useful for policy-makers to support rural transformation. In this paper, we examine the factors determining the voluntary participation of farm households in land consolidation and investigate its impacts on crop producti...

Enhancing rice production efficiency in developing countries is important to improve the livelihoods of farmers and to ensure global food security for a growing population. Despite significant progress in recent decades, rice production is facing multiple challenges from climate change to the increasing competition for land, labor and capital from...

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural income growth on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro‐scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by agricultural income growth. This study provides a comparative analysis of the patterns of mi...

In this article, we review and shed light on the interlinkages between interstate war and food insecurity and discuss global policy actions needed to address the challenges of food insecurity due to interstate war. We conceptualize the interlinkages between these two issues with a focus on: (i) the most critical and direct cause of interstate war,...

Purpose The authors examine the association between infrastructure and a household's resilience capacity against shocks and the impacts of a household's resilience capacity on household consumption and poverty. Design/methodology/approach The authors use panel data (collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016) from 1,698 households in Thailand and 1,701 hous...

Poverty remains a substantial threat in rural areas of many developing countries, and solving this problem requires an in-depth understanding of the income generating capacity that determines poverty. This paper examines the impact of agricultural commercialisation on the capability of rural households to accumulate and productively use assets and...

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural income growth on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by agricultural income growth. This study provides a comparative analysis of the patterns of mi...

Natural resources are depleting at an alarming rate, causing severe threats to the sustainable development in many developing countries. Given an ambiguous relationship between shocks, agricultural productivity, and natural resource extraction, we used a dataset of about 4200 rural households surveyed in four Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia, La...

Since the global food price crisis between 2007 and 2008, governments in developing countries such as Vietnam have paid more attention to food security issues. The government of Vietnam has issued policies to sustain rice land and imposed restrictions upon the transformation of rice land to ensure food security. Land consolidation is important to i...

This research aimed to examine the factors affecting the participation of female rural-urban migrants in online marketplaces, and the welfare gains and their distribution. Our analysis was based on a unique dataset of rural households, villages, and rural-urban migrants in Thailand and Vietnam. Online market participation is classified into three a...

Balancing biodiversity conservation with land use for agricultural production is a major societal challenge. Conservation activities must be prioritized since funds and resources for conservation are insufficient in the context of current threats, and conservation competes with other societal priorities. In order to contribute to conservation prior...

This paper examines whether heterogeneities in financial development among Vietnamese provinces matter for firm growth in Vietnam. Using a nationally representative firm survey that covers more than 41,000 firms for the period 2009 − 2013, we estimate the impact of provincial financial development on the growth rates of firms by accounting for sect...

We use a panel dataset of around 3.500 rural households from Southeast Asia and investigate evidence on crime victimization. More concretely, we ask (1) to what extent are rural people in Thailand and Vietnam affected by crime? And (2) what factors determine rural crime victimization? We use the routine activity approach as the theoretical framewor...

Increasing the supply of forest ecosystem services in the tropics is on the agenda of most developing countries’ forest policies and most importantly in Kenya which is a low forest cover country. Evidence from past empirical impact assessments show numerous limitations in these assessments such as complexities within local forest communities and ch...

Natural resources are important in sustaining the livelihoods of rural households and the environment. However, over-exploitation is causing an alarming depletion of natural resources in many developing countries. At the same time, rapid economic growth has created non-farm employment opportunities for local people. In this context, examining the i...

We examine the roles of land and labor diversification in mitigating the effects of covariate and idiosyncratic shocks in the two middle-income countries Thailand and Vietnam. We use an unbalanced panel dataset of rural households obtained from five survey waves during 2007-2016 (9291 households for Thailand and 9255 households for Vietnam). We emp...

This study uses the data of 1912 and 1815 rural households surveyed in 2016 and 2017, respectively in three provinces of Thailand to examine the factors affecting the decision of rural households to use the internet and the impacts of internet use on household income and poverty. Results from a probit model show that the decision of rural household...

This paper investigates the role of land rental markets in livelihood choices using data from 792 farming households in rural Vietnam. First, we cluster households according to livelihood strategies and estimate the determinants of the respective decision. In a second step, we analyze the contribution of rented land in linking smallholders to outpu...

We examine the factors affecting livestock production by using a two-part fixed effects model and assess the contribution of livestock production in reducing income inequality by using the Gini decomposition method. We use panel household data from four rural surveys in three provinces of Vietnam. Our results show that (1) livestock production can...

Eliminating ultra-poverty has received particular attention of policymakers and scholars. The ultra-poor in mountainous regions often live on subsistence farming and natural resource extraction. One of the sustainable ways to support them is to find alternative livelihood options that reduce natural resource extraction and increase household income...

Rice is one of the most important crops for food security and rural livelihoods in many developing countries in Asia. However, the current rice farming practices heavily rely on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that pose a significant threat to the environment. Further, the overuse of inputs might lead to the wastage of resources. Therefore, th...

This research aimed to examine the factors affecting the participation of female rural-urban migrants in online marketplaces, the welfare gains and their distribution from the participation. Our analysis was based on the data of 373 female rural-urban migrants in Thailand and Vietnam. Online market participation is classified into three activities,...

The effect of total factor productivity on export is of particular interest to policymakers and economists but empirical evidence is ambiguous. This paper uses the panel data from the Vietnamese enterprise surveys in 2010- 2015 to investigate the causal effect of total productivity on export transitions of manufacturing sectors. The system GMM esti...

Sustaining economic growth while reducing dependence on fossil fuels remains a challenge for our world to fight against climate change and therefore finding a way to promote economic growth and increase renewable energy use is needed. This paper uses a 22-year panel dataset (1994–2015) of 9 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations pr...

Economic sanctions remain a popular tool in international politics and have drawn the attention of economists, policy makers and the public, in particular the quantification of their effects. In this study, we examine the impact of economic sanctions imposed by Western countries on the exports of the Russian Federation (RF) and the impact of counte...

The Vietnamese agricultural sector has experienced a dramatic structural change based on increased specialization in rice cultivation. However, small scale rice-farmers have continued to grow multiple crops, especially in less developed provinces. While the literature advocates crop diversification for reasons of both economic and ecological sustai...

In this paper, we examined the asymmetric and symmetric effects of real exchange rate on bilateral trade balance between the United States and Vietnam at the industry level by employing both ARDL and NARDL models. We found that (i) only symmetric real exchange rate is statistically significant in explaining the total trade balance between the US an...

There is an ongoing debate about how best to feed the growing world population in the long run and associated implications for research and development. Some call for a new Green Revolution to secure the supply of staple foods, whereas others emphasize the importance of diversifying and improving people's diets. We aim to contribute to this debate...

Understanding the drivers and income effects of land rental markets is important to facilitate agricultural transformation. This study uses a panel dataset of rural households in Vietnam to examine the efficiency, equity and income effects of land rental markets. Probit and tobit models find that land is transferred from less to more efficient farm...

Extraction of environmental resources and migration are closely related livelihood strategies of rural households in developing countries. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the relationship between environmental income and remittances is needed to lower the existing pressure on environmental resources and to promote rural development. This study...

Extreme weather events are reported to have severe effects on rural households in the developing world. This study uses a unique and comparable panel dataset of about 4000 rural households collected in three years (2010, 2013, and 2016) from Northeast Thailand and Central Vietnam to examine and compare the welfare effects of floods, droughts, and s...

In this paper we submit some thoughts on the possible implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for rural people in the countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). We base our observations and conclusions on our long-term research experience in the region. The paper focuses on the economics of rural households during this crisis period and its aft...

One of the remaining challenges in explaining differences in total factor productivity is heterogeneity between sectors and within a specific sector in terms of labor and capital. This paper employs the generalized method of moments (GMM) to identify factors that affect total factor productivity across 21 manufacturing sectors and to clarify the he...

Vietnam’s forests have experienced a notable transformation over the past 20 years from net deforestation to reforestation and expanding forests. Continued reforestation that aims to achieve further economic and environmental benefits remains a national priority and strategy. We explore the current status of plantation forests and highlight possibl...

Analysis of rural vulnerability to weather shocks requires an accurate exposure record. Both self-reported and weather data records have been used with potential biases. We are the first to evaluate these biases by constructing two comparable records: self-reported weather shocks from a rural household panel dataset and measured weather shocks from...

This paper examines the factors affecting the decision of migrants to return home in rural areas and their length of stay in cities with a focus on shocks and rural development policies. We use the unique Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel (TVSEP) data. Our results reveal that the decision to return is positively associated with demographic shoc...

Enhancement of rice production efficiency in developing countries is important to improve the livelihoods of farmers and to ensure global food security for a growing population. Despite significant progress in recent decades, rice production in these countries is facing multiple challenges from climate change, land degradation, to the increasing co...

Health shocks are common and have serious consequences for the rural poor in developing countries. In this study, we examine the impact of health shocks of household members on the household's vulnerability to poverty. We also analyze the role of natural resource extraction in dealing with health shocks to smooth household consumption. We use a pan...

Credit is commonly considered an important instrument to relieve financial capital constraints of poor households and subsequently to improve their welfare. However, the empirical impact of credit on consumption inequality remains ambiguous. We use a 2-year panel dataset collected in Daklak, a province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, to invest...

A detailed understanding of households' shock-coping capacity is needed to design appropriate social safety net programs and interventions. We use a 2-year panel dataset from rural Cambodia to seek answers to the following research questions: (i) are rural households forced to reduce their consumption due to shocks? and (ii) what are the factors af...

Nonfarm employment has been increasingly important in improving food security of rural households in the developing world. In this paper, we (1) determine the factors explaining the participation in nonfarm employment and nonfarm income of rural households by employing a two-part random effects econometric model, and (2) examine the effects of nonf...

This article examines the impacts of migration with and without remittances on crop productivity growth , crop diversification, and non-farm labor diversification of rural households in Vietnam. We use village fixed-effects regression models for a panel data set of about 2,000 rural households collected in 2007, 2008 and 2010 in three rural provinc...

Using year-2013 household-level data from Cambodia’s Stung Treng Province, this work explores the empirical link between crop production efficiency and the reliance on environmental income on the household level. On a descriptive level, almost all households of Stung Treng Province are engaged in some degree of (mostly traditional) farming and subs...

Whether local financial development could reduce the constraints for women to promote economic growth is an important question that has been paid little attention. In this paper, we use data of more than 40,000 firms collected in Vietnam from 2009 to 2013 to examine the effects of local financial development, male ownership and the joint effect of...

Using panel data of more than 1,000 rural households from three rural provinces in Vietnam, we find that farming efficiency is a driver of cropland rental market development that enhances land use efficiency and results in an overall income gain for market participants. Our findings highlight the importance of cropland rental markets in facilitatin...

Increasing farm technical efficiency in developing countries is essential to raise farm productivity, and cropland rental market is theoretically expected to contribute to farm production efficiency growth. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between cropland rental market and farm technical efficiency in developing countries is scarce....

Increasing farm technical efficiency in developing countries is essential to raise farm productivity, and cropland rental market is theoretically expected to contribute to farm production efficiency growth. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between cropland rental market and farm technical efficiency in developing countries is scarce....

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural productivity on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by exogenous agricultural productivity growth. This study identifies early trends in the agricul...

Economic growth coupled with population increase and globalization have engendered structural changes in consumption patterns around the world. Contingent on their composition, these changes can be demanding on natural resources and pose unsustainable challenges for the environment. The paper aims to provide a general framework to assess the link b...

Supplements

We introduce an explicit indicator and the Land Use Management Support System to assess the resource-use efficiency of land use (RUE) at the landscape scale. To estimate RUE, we relate land-use performance with regard to ecosystem services indicators to the maximum possible land-use performance based on an optimised land-use configuration. The test...

The drinking water quality along the Soyang watershed has been affected negatively by the intensive agricultural practices in the upstream area. Our study used a choice experiment method in order to estimate the values that the upstream water providers (i.e., farmers) and downstream water users (i.e., consumers) attach to the following attributes,...

Forest ecosystem service (FES) provisioning and management in Vietnam is a priority in the Vietnamese environmental agenda. The main rationale of private forest management is to maximise profits from timber and non-timber forest product (NTFP) production. From a social point of view an under-supply of positive forest externalities (or non-marketed...

There is a belief that sustainability-certified coffee production helps increase economic benefits to farmers and reduces negative environmental impacts. However, the international empirical evidence is not conclusive. Also, there is a lack of empirical evidence for Vietnam - the world's second-largest coffee producing country. This paper provides...

Farm production and natural forest extraction remain principal livelihood strategies of local people in many rural areas of the developing world. In this paper, we apply stochastic frontier analysis to evaluate farm production efficiency and simultaneous equations modelling to estimate the interrelationship between farm production efficiency and na...

Literature has consistently reiterated that the self-employed non-poor underreport their business income to tax authorities and in household surveys. In this work, we measure the extent to which poor households engaging in illegal environmental activities underreport income in Laos. We use a two year panel data and apply the Engel curve to detect a...

This paper provides a comparative assessment of the productive efficiency of three common coffee growing systems in Vietnam: mono-cropping, synchronization and segregation. Results from an input distance function approach deliver several important findings. First, the average inefficiency level is estimated to be around 18% although inefficiency va...

This paper assesses the contribution of livestock to reducing rural poverty and examines the determinants of livestock assets with panel data from Vietnam. The findings show that livestock production contributes to reducing poverty and livestock assets are influenced by the number of shocks that households faced during the last three years, access...

River restoration is essential to guarantee access to ecosystem services provided by free-flowing rivers. One mechanism to restore rivers is the decommissioning of run-of-the-river dams, but restoration can create opposition as anthropised landscapes form part of the environmental history and imaginary. To facilitate decision-making, actorsʼ percep...

This study aims to provide an opinion on the state-of-the-art of changes and reforms of water policies in South Korea, as well as the challenges along with their implications for sustainable water governance and management. In parallel with change in water resource characteristics generated by physical, environmental and socioeconomic challenges su...

Understanding the impact of migration on rural household expenditures is important since household expenditure patterns can demonstrate whether remittances are used for consumption or for investment. This paper investigates the effects of rural-urban migration on consumption expenditure patterns of rural households of Vietnam. The econometric analy...

We examine the economic incentive and the factors affecting tree planting by rural households in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Data are from a household survey conducted in three districts of Lam Dong province. A financial analysis is undertaken to identify the economic incentive and a Heckman econometric regression model is used to examine the...

In the last decade, the South Korean government implemented an unprecedented series of plans and policy actions to promote sustainable development, including the National Strategy for Green Growth. Some of these initiatives were direct responses to the evolving challenges in the water sector, and put forest hydrological services into perspective. T...