Adjusting State And Market In Vietnam

The paper explores the pattern of transition of the Vietnamese economy, the policies that were applied, and the reasons for the country's success. In particular, it focuses on output performance; state-owned enterprises; foreign direct investment; determinants of inflation; dollarization and problems of economic management; international integration and exchange rate policy; growth and diversification of trade, trade reform, exchange reform, and exchange rate policy.

Lively debates around property, access to resources, legal rights, and the protection of livelihoods have unfolded in Vietnam since the economic reforms of 1986. Known as Doi Moi (changing to the new), these have gradually transformed the country from a socialist state to a society in which a communist party presides over a neoliberal economy. By exploring the complex relationship between property, the state, society, and the market, this book demonstrates how both developmental issues and state-society relations in Vietnam can be explored through the prism of property relations and property rights. The essays in this collection demonstrate how negotiations over property are deeply enmeshed with dynamics of state formation, and covers debates over the role of the state and its relationship to various levels of society, the intrusion of global forces into the lives of marginalized communities and individuals, and how community norms and standards shape and reshape national policy and laws. With contributors from around the world, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of East and Southeast Asian studies, including politics, culture, society, and law, as well as those interested in the role of the state and property relations more generally.

This clear and accessible text explores Vietnam's successful transition from neo-Stalinist central planning to a market economy—\"Vietnamese style.\" After describing the north Vietnamese system prior to 1975 and its colonial and precolonial antecedents, the authors uncover the mechanisms of that changeover. They contend that the Vietnamese transition was largely bottom-up in character and that it evolved over a long enough period for the country's political economy to adjust. This explains in part the rapid shift to a high-growth, externally oriented development path in the early 1990s, despite the loss of Soviet aid and the lack of significant Western substitutes until 1992-1993. Based upon extensive incountry experience, a wealth of primary materials, and wide comparative knowledge of development issues, the book challenges many preconceived notions, both about Vietnam and about the general nature of transition processes.

Peter Wolff analyzes the history and major economic features of the Vietnamese reforms since 1975. He focuses on the reform of enterprises and the financial sector and gives an overall picture of the reform efforts in the areas of rural development, the social sectors and environmental policy.

Taking a developmental approach, this book critically reviews Vietnam's reform process and shows how the country’s reform agenda is still dominated by a ‘developmental orthodoxy’ inspired by a post-Washington consensus. The author argues that a wider debate is needed in order to give national policy makers the full spectrum of alternatives to support well-informed policy decisions. In particular, the book indicates that two issues central for any analysis of the Vietnamese development reform process are substantially underdeveloped in the current scientific debate: the experience of the East Asian developmental state and the question of socialism. Presenting a way of thinking about Vietnam that goes beyond the orthodox, the book sets out the various paradigms through which the Vietnamese economy can be analyzed. This is a welcome addition to the literature and will appeal to both practitioners working in the field and the academic community in Southeast Asian studies, economics and development.

These previously unpublished papers by leading American and Vietnamese economists analyze the dramatic transformation of Vietnam's economy during the 1990s and its prospects for the future. The three main sections of the book discuss Vietnam's turbulent history, recent economic reforms, and the country's emerging role in the world economy and geopolitics. The contributors examine a myriad of issues, including specific reforms in agriculture, banking, and tax policy, as well as the attempts to create a business-oriented legal infrastructure, the development of foreign trade and a viable balance of payments, and U.S. policy reactions to Vietnam's rapid development in the last decade.

Since the doi moi reforms in 1986, Vietnam has experienced a dramatic socioeconomic transformation. Lim examines the role of the state and its interaction with market forces in bringing this change about. Taking the motorcycle and banking industries as case studies, this book explores the dynamics between the state and transnational corporations in shaping the manufacturing and service sectors, respectively. Vietnam, as one of Southeast Asia's quintessential latecomer economies with little prior experience of dealing with transnational corporations, has nevertheless been quite successful in maintaining some control over the impact of foreign direct investment. Yet, the learning outcomes remain highly uneven. In addition, Lim argues that Vietnamese advancement in both industries mirrors only partially the more generalized patterns of state-led development in East Asia's earlier batch of latecomer economies. Vietnam's case thus presents practical lessons on how to succeed in crafting and utilizing policy instruments to achieve domestic economic and technological upgrading. This book will be of great interest to scholars of political economy and industrial policy in East Asia, as well as to scholars and policy professionals analyzing approaches to development strategy more broadly.