MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ******* HOÀNG VĂN VIỆT INVESTIGATING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR: A MULTI-LEVEL APPROACH DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DISSERTATION Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ******* HOÀNG VĂN VIỆT INVESTIGATING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR: A MULTI-LEVEL APPROACH Major: Doctor Dissertation on Development Economics Code: 62310105 ACADEMIC ADVISERS: 1. Trần Tiến Khai 2. Từ Văn Bình A dissertation submitted to the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father-Hoàng Văn Thọ, to my mother-Trần Thị Sang, and to my daughter- Hoàng Nguyễn Minh Châu “The more I study science, the more I believe in God” -Albert Einstein- ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to express my best gratitude to Prof. Trần Tiến Khai, Prof.
Matthew Gorton, and Prof. Trần Tiến Khai brings me in the research career with the initial lesson, advice, and passion. Matthew Gorton and Prof. Carmen Hubbard raise me up to the international research standards with the advice, the lesson, and the research cooperation opportunities.
Second, I am deeply thankful to my teachers: Dr. Phạm Khánh Nam, Prof. Nguyễn Trọng Hoài, Prof. Lionel Hubbard, Prof.
Peter Goldsmith, Prof. Từ Văn Bình, Dr. Trương Đăng Thụy, and Prof. Nguyễn Ngọc Vinh for the lessons, guides, and advice.
Third, I am really indebted to my colleagues: Mr. Nguyễn Khánh Duy, Ms. Nguyễn Quỳnh An, Ms. Nguyễn Hồng Mai, Ms.
Nguyễn Phan Trúc Phương, and Mr. Hồ Minh Chí. They contribute the important parts to my achievement of this dissertation. Especially, I would express my gratitude and respect to Prof.
Nguyễn Đông Phong who indirectly empower me with the strategic and excellent policies for young lecturers. Moreover, I am thankful to the board of professors, the independent reviewers, journal editorial boards, and journal reviewers for their constructive reviewing and comments. I am wholeheartedly grateful to my family for their love, trust, support, sharing, and encouragement. This dissertation would be never completed without them.
Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 Hoàng Văn Việt DECLARATION I, Hoàng Văn Việt, declare that the PhD dissertation entitled “Investigating and Comparing the Agricultural Competitiveness of Vietnam” strictly conforms to the regulations and the rules of Ministry of Education and Training and the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City. This dissertation contains no material that has been submitted previously, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic degree or diploma. Except where otherwise indicated, this dissertation is my own work. Ho Chi Minh City, December, 2017 Hoàng Văn Việt i TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES.
v LIST OF FIGURES. vii LIST OF APPENDICES. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. Research gap identification.
Research objectives and questions. Brief of research methodology, scope, and data. Expected significance and contribution. The structure and outline of the dissertation.
16 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Definition of competitiveness .2 Evolution of competitiveness theory .3 Frameworks of competitiveness .1 Economic and production indicators .2 Trade performance indices .4 Summary and the general framework of the dissertation. 56 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA .1 The trade performance indices .1 Revealed comparative advantage (RCA) .2 Relative trade advantage (RTA) .3 Normalized revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) .4 Dynamics of comparative advantage indicators .5 Complementarity and substitutability analysis .7 The data for the trade performance indices .2 The economic and production indicators in the PAM model .2 Private cost ratio (PCR) .4 Domestic resource cost (DRC) .5 Social cost-benefit (SCB) .6 Nominal protection coefficient (NPC) .7 Effective protection coefficient (EPC) .9 Subsidy ratio to producers (SRP) .10 The data and estimations for the PAM indicators .11 Sensitivity analysis of the PAM indicators. 82 CHAPTER 4: VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL TRADE COMPETITIVENESS: THE CROSS-SECTIONS ANALYSIS .1 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the RCA .1 Measuring the static competitiveness .2 Analyzing the dynamics of the competitiveness indicators .2 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the RTA .1 Measuring the static competitiveness .2 Analyzing the dynamics of the RTA indicators .3 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the NRCA .1 Measuring the static competitiveness .2 Analyzing the dynamics of of the NRCA indicators .4 The consistencies of the trade performance indices: sector-ranking. 99 CHAPTER 5: THE ASEAN COUNTRIES’ AGRICULTURAL TRADE PATTERNS: THE CROSS-COUNTRIES ANALYSIS .1 The agricultural international trade performance of ASEAN countries .1 Agricultural competitiveness by the RCA .2 Agricultural competitiveness by the RTA .3 Agricultural competitiveness by NRCA index .4 Analyzing the dynamics of agricultural competitiveness indicators .2 The trade agricultural complementarity of the ASEAN countries .1 The agricultural trade complementarity of the ASEAN countries .2 The agricultural export similarity of the ASEAN countries.3 The agricultural complementarity by Spearman coefficients.4 The impact of external markets and factors .3 The consistencies of the trade performance indices: country-ranking.
118 CHAPTER 6: THE COMPETITIVENESS OF ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURAL CROPS: A CASE STUDY OF BEN TRE.1 Measuring the comparative advantage of the alternative crops .1 The comparative advantage of rice.2 The comparative advantage of coconut .3 The comparative advantage of pomelo.2 Indicators and sectors consistency and comparison analysis .3 Sensitive analysis of the comparative advantage indicators .2 Water and land charges .3 The parameters of assuming changes of the variables. 134 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS .1 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness .2 The ASEAN countries’ agricultural trade patterns .3 Competitiveness of alternative agricultural production systems in Ben Tre .4 Theoretical analysis and conclusion. 145 Re-structuring the agricultural production and trade pattern. 146 Maintaining the rankings of strong competitiveness sectors.
147 Expanding and enforcing the regional and global integration. 148 Building the agricultural production master plans. 150 Promoting sustainable agriculture and adapting to climate changes. 151 LIST OF MY PUBLICATIONS & PROJECTS.
1 LIST OF REFERENCES. 28 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1: The evolution of competitiveness theory. 33 Table 2-2: The measures of competitiveness by level of analysis. 35 Table 3-1: The accounting structure of policy analysis matrix.
72 Table 3-2: Sample descriptions for the PAM indicators. 78 Table 4-1: Vietnam’s top agricultural competitiveness by the RCA. 85 Table 4-2: The change of the RCA indicators position between 1997 and 2014. 86 Table 4-3: The OLS estimation results for the RCA indicators over three periods.
87 Table 4-4: The classifications of RCA values and the interpretations. 88 Table 4-5: The M-Shorrocks and Markov transition matrix for the RCA values. 88 Table 4-6: The top gaining and losing trends of the RCA indicators. 89 Table 4-7: Vietnam’s top agricultural competitiveness by the RTA.
90 Table 4-8: The changes of the RTA indicator ranks between 1997 and 2014. 91 Table 4-9: The OLS estimation results for the RTA indicators over three periods. 92 Table 4-10: The classification of the RTA values and the interpretations. 93 Table 4-11: The M-Shorrocks and Markov transition matrix for the RTA values.
93 Table 4-12: The top gaining and losing trends of the RTA indicators. 94 Table 4-13: Vietnam’s top agricultural trade competitiveness by the NRCA. 96 Table 4-14: The changes of the NRCA indicator ranks between 1997 and 2014. 96 Table 4-15: The OLS estimation results for the NRCA indicators over time.
97 Table 4-16: The classification of the of NRCA values and the interpretations. 97 Table 4-17: The Markov transition probability matrix for the NRCA indicators. 98 Table 4-18: The top gaining and losing trends of the NRCA indicators. 99 Table 4-19: The consistencies the RCA, the RTA, and the NRCA by sector-ranking.
100 Table 5-1: The agricultural competitiveness of the ASEAN countries by the RCA. 104 Table 5-2: The number of strong agricultural competitive sectors by the RCA. 105 Table 5-3: The agricultural competitiveness of the ASEAN countries by the RTA. 106 vi Table 5-4: The agricultural competitiveness of the ASEAN countries by the NRCA.
107 Table 5-5: The agricultural competitiveness ranking of the ASEAN countries. 107 Table 5-6: The agricultural competitiveness patterns of the ASEAN countries. 109 Table 5-7: The Markov transition probability matrices result. 109 Table 5-8: The agricultural trade complementarity by the TCI.
110 Table 5-9: The agricultural export similarities of the ASEAN countries. 112 Table 5-10: The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients of the RCA indicators. 113 Table 5-11: The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients of the RTA indicators. 114 Table 5-12: The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients of the NRCA indicators.
115 Table 5-13: Mean coefficients of the consistency between trade indices. 119 Table 6-1: Rice’s PAM summary and comparative advantage indicators (VND). 123 Table 6-2: Rice’s comparative advantage by the trade indices. 123 Table 6-3: Coconut’s PAM summary and comparative advantage indicators (VND).
126 Table 6-4: Coconut’s comparative advantage by the trade indices. 126 Table 6-5: Pomelo’s PAM summary and comparative advantage indicators (VND). 128 Table 6-6: Pomelo’s comparative advantage by the trade indices. 128 Table 6-7: Comparing the competitiveness of different sectors by various indices.
131 Table 6-8: The comparative advantage indicators with the land opportunity cost. 132 Table 6-9: Sensitivity analysis of the PAM indicators by the climate change. 133 Table 6-10: Sensitivity analysis of the PAM indicators by water & land charges. 134 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1: The general analysis framework of the dissertation.
59 Figure 5-1: The trend of the ASEAN countries’ agricultural trade complementarity. 111 Figure 5-2: The trend of the ASEAN countries’ agricultural export similarity. 112 Figure 5-3: The general trend of the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients. 115 Figure 5-4: The shares of the top markets in the ASEAN’s total agricultural export.
116 Figure 5-5: The shares of the top markets in the ASEAN’s total agricultural import. 117 viii LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Determinants of competitiveness. 28 Appendix 2: Multidimensional frameworks. 31 Appendix 3: Value chain performance approaches.
41 Appendix 5: The ASEAN countries’ agricultural sectors. 45 Appendix 6: Vietnamese agricultural sector. 47 Appendix 7: The Agriculture in Ben Tre Province. 54 Appendix 8: Agricultural comparative advantages of Vietnam by the RCA.
58 Appendix 9: Agricultural comparative advantages of Vietnam by the RTA. 59 Appendix 10: Agricultural comparative advantages of Vietnam by the NRCA. 60 Appendix 11: ASEAN countries’ agricultural competitiveness by the RCA in 2015. 62 Appendix 12: ASEAN countries’ agricultural competitiveness by the RTA in 2015.
63 Appendix 13: ASEAN countries’ agricultural competitiveness by the NRCA in 2015. 65 Appendix 14: OLS regression of ASEAN countries’ competitiveness indicators. 67 Appendix 15: Classes of RCA, RTA, and NRCA values and the interpretations. 68 Appendix 16: Markov transition probability matrix for the RCA index.
69 Appendix 17: Private and social input cost of rice sector (1000VND). 71 Appendix 18: Private and social input cost of coconut sector (1000VND). 71 Appendix 19: Private and social input cost of pomelo sector (1000VND). 72 Appendix 20: Private and social output of rice sector (1000VND).
72 Appendix 21: Private and social output of coconut sector (1000VND). 73 Appendix 22: Private and social output of pomelo sector (1000VND). 74 Appendix 23: Sensitivity analysis of competitiveness indicators by the output prices. 74 Appendix 24: Sensitivity analysis of competitiveness indicators by the fertilizer prices 75 Appendix 25: Sensitivity analysis of competitiveness indicators by the land rent prices 75 Appendix 26: Sensitivity analysis of competitiveness indicators by the crop yields.
76 ix Appendix 27: Sensitivity analysis of competitiveness indicators by the REER. 76 Appendix 28: Survey questionnaire for coconut farmer. 77 Appendix 29: Survey questionnaire for coconut trader/collector. 82 Appendix 30: Survey questionnaire for coconut primary processor .