Research Activities

Research Projects 2025

The net effects of foreign investment on employment and demand for skills: Vietnam

Outline

We seek to understand the contribution of export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing in Vietnam to overall job growth and skills demand. Nearly all new export-oriented manufacturing jobs come via foreign direct investment (FDI). Do such investments support educational deepening, or compete with it? Studies in other countries find positive employment multipliers (the sum of direct and indirect employment effects for each FDI job created) but net effects on skills demand are not always rigorously quantified. Our initial efforts to use commuting zone (CZ) data to define labor market area were unsatisfactory due to data weaknesses, so we will use district data for basic units of analysis. Our findings will fill gaps in knowledge on the contribution of the "factory to the world” strategies to economic growth, poverty alleviation, and human capital formation.

Period

April 2024 - March 2026

Members
Role Member
[ Organizer ] Coxhead, Ian
[ Co-researcher ] Vuong Dinh Tuan Nguyen(University of Tsukuba Assistant Professor)
[ Co-researcher ] Banh, Thi Hang(National University of Singapore Research Fellow)

*Affiliations are as of April 2025.

Expected Outcome
  • Paper Submission to Peer-Reviewed Journal