Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

About: Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences is a education organization based out in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Vietnamese & Poverty. The organization has 228 authors who have published 222 publications receiving 1690 citations. The organization is also known as: VASS.

Higher Education Governance in Vietnam: Statism Versus Institutional Autonomy

Abstract: Governance usually refers to the coordination of the activities of a social system. It relates to principles and norms of behaviour in relations between constituents. Traditionally, the governance of higher education (HE) has been conducted by hierarchical control in many countries, with the state at the top of the hierarchy. More recently, though, the governance of HE has adopted a more corporate model of coordination between state and non-state actors (Pham 2010). Despite a series of policy changes designed to move towards this model of cooperation, the governance of HE in Vietnam continues to cling far too much to the traditional hierarchical mould. The problem of how HE is governed at both the system and institutional levels can be defined by the fact that both state controls and market forces have decisive roles in the governance process. In the past, the HE system in Vietnam trained graduates only for a state-planned economy. Funds for HE came from the state, and the HE system was managed centrally; there was only top-down governance. In the multi-sectoral economy which resulted from the doimoi (renovation) policy implemented in 1986, the HE system serves not only the state sector but also non-state ones. In these circumstances, higher education institutions (HEIs) are ideally given more autonomy in governance. Although this market-renovation policy has been in place for 30 years, the state still has a strong power over HEIs. This chapter will analyse how this power has affected coordination between the state agency and HEIs in the governance process.

Remittances from Migrants: Experience of Vietnamese Households

Abstract: By analyzing data from the three Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys between 2002 and 2006, the authors found that a very large proportion of Vietnamese households received remittances during those years and that these remittances constituted a significant share of household incomes. The majority of households received remittances from within Vietnam, but for those able to access remittances from abroad, the amounts were very much larger. In general, remittances do seem to play an “insurance role” for the poor, cushioning any sudden falls in household incomes. There is also some evidence that public transfers can crowd out private remittances, but the effect is by no means complete.

Spillovers of the United States’ Unconventional Monetary Policy to Emerging Asia: The Bank Lending Channel

Abstract: This article assesses the spillover effects of the United States’ unconventional monetary policy (i.e., quantitative easing programs adopted during 2008–2014) on the Asian credit market. Focusing on cross-border bank lending, we employed firm-level loan data with regard to the syndicated loan market and measured the international bank lending channel through changes in the United States dollar-denominated loans extended to Asian borrowers. We found that the growth of dollar credit in Asia increased substantially in response to the quantitative easing in the US financial market. The results of this study confirm the existence of the bank lending channel in Asia and emphasize the role of credit flows in transmitting financial conditions. The article also provides new evidence of cross-border liquidity spillover in the syndicated loan market. We found that the overall spillover effect was large but differed significantly in Asia by types of borrowing firms, financing purposes, and loan terms at diffe...

'Cultural Additivity' and How the Values and Norms of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism Co-Exist, Interact, and Influence Vietnamese Society: A Bayesian Analysis of Long-Standing Folktales, Using R and Stan

Abstract: Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity,” prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings – Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism – as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β_{VT⋅VC} =0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giao đồng nguyen”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity.”

Mental health among Vietnamese urban late adolescents: The association of parenting styles:

Abstract: The aim of this study was to explore the correlation between parental styles and mental problems among Vietnamese high school students. In total, 16.4 percent of 757 eligible participants reported ...