Journal of International Economics and Management

Over the past decades, Vietnam has increased trade volume and expanded its trade partners. It is often argued that the exchange rate policy should be revised to improve international trade. By applying the gravity model with international trade data between Vietnam and her world partners, this study shows that exchange rate devaluation may not help. More important is to have a more flexible exchange rate and to upgrade domestic production capacity as well as to implement structure reform.

Domestic investment is a key component of the economic growth of any country. In recent years, the growth of domestic investment has not been optimistic. This study aims at analyzing the factors affecting domestic investment in Tanzania. Time-series data of the 1980- 2020 period is used to empirically analyse the performance of the domestic investment. The study applies the Error Correction Model (ECM) to estimate the parameters. Factors affecting domestic investment in Tanzania are critically analysed. The factors influencing domestic investment includes money supply, interest rate, savings rate, and government expenditure. The regression results of this study show that government expenditure is insignificant in influencing domestic investment while money supply, interest rate, and savings rate are statistically significant. To this end, measures that influence domestic investment are indeed called for, implying a need for policies that can control interest rates, savings rates, and money supply . This paper recommends putting in place a conducive environment that could accelerate financial intermediation and domestic savings mobilization in order to improve domestic investment. Furthermore, the study suggests the encouragement of investment incentives and the establishment of vibrant investment promotion agencies.

This paper examines the post-announcement stock performance of U.S. public firms which issue equity privately, analyzed by firm and transaction characteristics. We find that firms which issue equity privately with the use of common equity do perform significantly better than if they would with the use of convertibles. Furthermore, firms with a relative high investment in R&D, e.g. biotechnology firms, do significantly outperform the market. However, a substantial part of the outperformance is linked to industry specific factors. No evidence is found to confirm that private placements enable entrenchment for incumbent management. 

Employing the data for the period before the Asian Financial Crisis 1997-1998, between Jan 1987 and Dec 1996 under the light of the methodology proposed by Fama and McBeth (1973), the research investigates the relationship between the stock returns in the Stock Exchange of Thailand and some economic fundamentals including changes in exchange rates, industrial production growth rates, unexpected changes in inflation, changes in the current account balance, differences between domestic interest rates and international interest rates, changes in domestic interest rate. The test’s results show that, within the scope of the methodology and data employed, the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) does hold in the very emerging stock market of Thailand, while the CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) fails to do so. While changes in exchange rates consistently explain the stock returns, there is one chance the exchange rates and the industrial growth rates together systematically affect the stock returns. The negative risk premiums associated with these factors shows investors in the SET are risk averse and tend to hedge against risks of changes in fundamentals. This research is an important contribution to the study of an emerging market stock price movements, which provides a base line for comparing with stock market price behaviours after the devastating crisis in Thailand in 1997-1998.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a core-required part in managing supply chain successfully. It has been considered a useful tool in connecting all the tiers through the entire supply chain by transferring the information, involving all the tiers into developing new products, proposing innovation and focusing on the demand of customers. This paper reviews previous frameworks in implementing ERP to identify core elements in deploying ERP. Base on the critical aspects a conceptual framework for implementing ERP in global environment is proposed. I conclude with a discussion of future research and application in this area.

According to the traditional cost behavior, costs are categorized as fixed or variable costs. Variable costs change proportionately with changes in the activity driver. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that cost increase with activity increase is more rapid than cost decrease with activity decrease. This phenomenon is named as sticky cost. In this paper, we measure the cost stickiness of each company and answer the research question that whether sticky costs affect the profitability of listed companies in Vietnam. We find that selling costs, general costs, and administration costs of listed companies in Vietnam are sticky in period 2011 – 2015, and the situation is more serious than the case of US and Brazil. Our analysis shows that the stickiness of selling and administration costs affects the earnings per share forecast. The paper suggests some recommendations for managers to avoid the negative effects of sticky cost on business performance.

This study investigates the influence of personality traits on positivity at work and officer performance at the district-level administrative agency in Hanoi. Based on the information obtained from 420 officers, the structural equation model was adopted to assess the impact of the Big Five model of personality on positivity at work and job performance. The results showed a positive relationship between personality traits, positivity at work, and job performance. At the same time, positivity at work positively impacts officers’ job performance. These findings suggest recommendations for district-level administrative agencies to enhance positivity at work and improve officers’ performance. This paper provides empirical evidence of the role of the Big Five model of personality. In addition, this study can serve as a reference for further research on organizational behavior in both public and private organizations.

The aim of this study is to contemplate the degree to which Singaporean firms comply with the highly technical disclosure requirements under FRS 36 specific to goodwill impairment testing. Singapore is chosen because of its advanced and economically significant economy in the heart of Asia, with a highly skilled professional workforce and strong institutional and financial infrastructure to support quality financial reporting. This research examined large listed firms reporting goodwill in three consecutive years, to establish compliance levels and disclosure quality post-transition. The study found that there was a slight improvement in the rate of compliance with accounting requirements over the investigation period. A significant Friedman test implies that the change was significant and the development is statistically significant. Findings indicated that compliance levels and disclosure quality, although better than prior studies would have suggested, are still sporadic and unpredictable. However, the overall results of the analysis in this study suggest that in the majority of cases the levels of compliance and disclosure quality among the Singaporean listed firms are low. This is particularly so for the cash-generating unit definition and goodwill allocation, and key input variables employed in estimating recoverable amounts of cash generating units (especially on discount rates selection). Based on these results, the majority of Singaporean firms face a high degree of difficulty in the translation from idea to action in implementing the requirements of the standard. Further, questions are raised about the quality of accounting information among goodwill-intensive firms in Singapore and the robustness of regulatory oversight institutions operating within Singapore.

Technology and innovation have been recognized as important and crucial to reducing poverty, generating wealth and bringing social progress for Vietnam. But the result is different in different sectors. Craft villages are composed mostly of small and micro household business characterized by family ownership and heavy involvement of the family members. Many clusters have achieved great success thank to applying innovation in production and business. What enabled small producers to introduce new technology into innovation process? How has new technology been developed, adapted and disseminated? There could be an investigation of innovation in informal micro and small enterprises with a view to offer alternatives. Actually, recent research shows changes in competitive capabilities, living conditions and the environment in informally organized craft villages. We propose to look at some examples of small-scale craft villages: Bat Trang and Duong Lieu in northern Vietnam. Both were identified as innovation industries based on the three common key elements: newness, value creation and innovative process.  

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of three competencies, which are management competence, technical competence and self-management competence, in predicting managerial effectiveness of sales managers. A survey was conducted with 134 managers and employees who are working for selected commercial banks in Hanoi, Vietnam. Data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The combination of interviews and regression analysis methods is used to test the hypotheses. The results show that all three competency factors were significantly related with managerial effectiveness. It is, thus, crucial for Vietnamese commercial banks’ managers to understand and continually equip themselves with critical competencies that would transform and eventually make them effective and successful managers.