2,911 research outputs found
Oral History of Hien Thi Tran
No full textAn oral history of Hien Thi Tran: a mother who was fortunate to migrate out of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon with her children, but with great fear. She tells her story of a seemingly simple, upper middle-class lifestyle, but also incites feelings of loneliness with a husband at war. Tragedies of the Vietnam War lead her to make heavy decisions that change the course of her family, her marriage, and her children.Recorded Digitall
Diversification strategies and firm performance in Vietnam
Get PDFThis paper is based upon the assumption that a firm's profitability is determined by its degree of diversification which is, in turn, strongly related to the antecedent decision to carry out diversification activities. This calls for an empirical approach that permits the joint analysis of the three interrelated and consecutive stages of the overall diversification process: diversification decision, degree of diversification and outcome of diversification. We apply parametric and semi-parametric approaches to control for sample selection and the endogeneity of the diversification decision in both static and dynamic models. For the analysis, we use the census dataset on the whole firm population in Vietnam, as a representative of transition countries. After controlling for industry fixed-effects, the empirical evidence from the firm-level data shows that diversification has a curvilinear effect on profitability: it improves firms’ profit up to a point, after which a further increase in diversification is associated with declining performance. This implies that firms should consider optimal levels of product diversification when they expand their product offerings beyond their core business. Other noteworthy findings include the following: (i) the factors that stimulate firms to diversify do not necessarily encourage them to extend their diversification strategy; (ii) firms that are endowed with highly technological resources and innovation investment are likely to successfully exploit diversification as an engine of growth; and (iii) while industry performance does not have a strong influence on the profitability of firms, it impacts their diversification decision as well as the degree of diversificatio
Capital constraints and the performance of entrepreneurial firms in Vietnam
Get PDFEntrepreneurship has been among the key driving forces of the emergence of a
dynamic private sector during the recent decades in Vietnam. This article addresses
for Vietnam the questions “how capital constraints affect the performance of
family firms” and “how entrepreneurs’ human and social capital interact with
capital constraints to leverage entrepreneurial income.” A panel of 1721 firms in
4 years is used. Results are consistent with the resource dependency approach,
indicating an adverse effect of capital constraints on firm performance: firms
suffering capital constraints perform substantially better, suggesting that they
need more capital simply to finance newly recognized profit opportunities.
Human capital plays a vital role in relaxing capital constraints and improves the
entrepreneurial performance, whereas the effect of social capital stemming from
strong ties and weak ties is limited: strong ties bring emotional support and weak
ties give nonfinancial benefits from regular and useful business contacts.
Advanced econometric analysis tools to take into account the endogeneity of
capital constraints are used to establish relationships among relevant variables
Corporate social performance and corporate financial performance: theory and empirical evidence from the recent global financial crisis
No full textThis thesis searches for the theoretical influence of corporate social performance (CSP) on corporate financial performance and to provide empirical evidence for this effect from the recent global crisis. Hence, the author investigates how and why CSP influences financial performance from the international perspective with a global dataset of Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies in three distinctive studies.The first study develops a model on how and why independent directors using CSP disclosure affect profitability. The model is built on Schmidt and Keil’s (2013) theory of the conditions and mechanisms that make resources valuable to a firm. The regression results support the proposed model in a way that the synergy of independent directors using CSP disclosure probably increases profitability. The second study tests the agency theory on the impact of executive remuneration combining with CSR disclosure on profitability. The study finds that a combination of executive remuneration and CSP disclosure are likely to improve profitability; however, higher salary and stock might be the drivers that affect executives to disclose more information on CSP, which enhances the corporate reputation in CSP. The third study tests the theory of transaction costs in a model on the influence of CSR on profitability intervened by corporate governance. The data support the model, suggesting that well-informed and good governance is the condition for a positive influence of CSP on financial performance.The novel contributions of the thesis are as follows. From an international perspective and use of a global-level dataset, the thesis confirms and extents the global theories related to corporate governance, and opens up the new research avenues. Empirically, this thesis is the first that proposes and tests a model on how and why independent directors using CSP disclosure affects profitability, underpinned by Schmidt and Keil’s (2013) function. Methodologically, the studies used the two measures of CSP in terms of disclosure and reputational rank; the structures of two simultaneous equations were used to fit the data. Further, the problem of endogeneity was addressed in the studies.At the firm level, the thesis implies that first, the strategy in which independent directors use CSP is likely to improve financial performance due to the willingness to pay for the increased resources and social capital of their firm. Second, the study results raise the concerns on managerial manipulation of CSP disclosure due to agency problems and information asymmetry problems, thus recommending independent directors’ role of monitoring CSP. Third, the study suggests that positive effect of CSP on financial performance is conditional on the intervention of transparent and good governance. Moreover, the thesis reveals the advantages of the two coordinating forms of economic activities from the recent financial crisis, one based on networks and the other on governance hierarchy. These should be macro policy considerations during periods of economic recession when the market mechanism might fail
Tran Hien video oral history interview and transcript
No full textThis recording and transcript form part of a collection of oral history interviews conducted by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation and donated to the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University. This collection includes video recordings of interviews with Vietnamese Americans native to or living in Texas. This interview forms part of the national 500 Oral Histories Project conducted by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation
De jure determinants of new firm formation: how the pillars of constitutions influence entrepreneurship
Get PDFThis paper provides empirical evidence supporting the view that constitutions are the primary and fundamental institutional determinant of entrepreneurship. It shows that some of the provisions contained in national constitutions are positively and significantly associated with a standard measure of entrepreneurial dynamics, namely the rate of new business density. Using for 115 countries a novel dataset containing the characteristics of the constitutions enacted in the world, applying an IV-GMM treatment to deal with the endogeneity of constitutional rules, and controlling for de facto variables, the paper finds that provisions about the right to conduct/establish a business, the right to strike, consumer protection, anti-corruption, and compulsory education promote higher rates of new firm formation. Contrasting results are instead obtained for provisions concerning protection of intellectual property rights
Efficiency or bounded rationality? Drivers of firm diversification strategies in Vietnam
Get PDFConsidering the case of diversified firms within a developing/transition
country such as Vietnam, this paper investigates diversification relatedness while taking
into account both firm- and industry-specific components. The high volatility of the
dynamics of diversification observed in Vietnam suggests the hypothesis that firms
decide to enter into new industries following a trial and error process, initiated by
boundedly rational herding behaviors, i.e., firms follow the most commonly observed
business combinations. Using a survivor-based (SB) measure of relatedness, we test the
hypothesis of boundedly rational behavior.We find that both the probability of exit and
the different performance measures (Return on sales and Total factor productivity) are
not or are negatively correlated with SB-related diversification. This is in contrast to
what has been observed in developed countries. However, using the SIC distance
approach, we obtain the expected positive relationship between performance and
relatedness in diversified firms. The conflicting result between these two relatedness
indices therefore suggests there has been a trend in follow-up among inexperienced
firms that imitate the direction and intensity of the diversification of dominating players
within the industry (herd behavior). However, diversified firms gain experience over
time and choose more efficient business combinations in subsequent entries. When we
use the classical SIC-based approach, we find that greater diversification raises profitability, but only to an optimum relatedness point, beyond which the positive effect
fades away. To control for the endogeneity of diversification relatedness and the serial
correlation in error terms, we adopt an instrumental-variable two-stage least-squares
estimation approach (IV-2SLS) with GMM treatment
Successful Transition to a Market Economy: An Interpretation From Organizational Ecology Theory and Institutional Theory
Get PDFThis paper investigates the rationales for the successful economic transition in a transition country through the lens of organizational ecology theory and institutional theory. Initially, the new private sector emerges and survives because of “legitimacy spillovers” from the legitimized transitional mixed sector and some market-oriented identity overlap. Over time, as the private sector builds its own legitimacy, it competes with the state and the mixed sector and challenges their existence. Finally, the Schumpeterian “creative destruction” process replaces the old out-of-date sectors with the new dominant sector. Consistent with organizational ecology theory, the evolution and dynamics of the three economic sectors take place through their interactions, which determine the emergence, prominence, decline and exit of firm populations in each sector. Depending on whether a centrally planned or market-oriented political legacy plays the dominant role in the regional environment where the transition takes place, local institutions play a moderating role in stimulating or hindering this evolution process. Empirically, we test this mechanism using census data for firms operating in Vietnam between 2000 and 2013, applying Blundell and Bond’s generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique and the piecewise exponential hazard model to study the interaction effects of economic sectors in terms of profitability and survival
The Interaction of Institutional Quality and Human Capital in Shaping the Dynamics of Capital Structure
No full textThis chapter aims to find if trade-off theory or pecking order theory best explain the capital structure of non-state firms during the post-transition process in Vietnam. We investigate the effect of human capital, institutional quality, and their interaction on the capital structure decision. Findings suggest the capital structure of Vietnamese firms is a balance between the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory. Accessing formal debts is tough for young and non-state firms, whereas those with access to formal loans take advantage of their leverage tools to exploit the tax benefits against the costs of financial distress. Other findings include: (i) profitability and debt tax shields are no longer important when entrepreneurs adopt informal debt financing; (ii) high-quality institutions enable firms to reduce reliance on debt financing; (iii) while human capital encourages entrepreneurs to obtain more loans, its interaction with institutional quality deters debt financing and favours other financial sources
- …
