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This study aims to analyse the consumption inequality between farm and non-farm households in rural Vietnam, using the data from the 2016 Vietnam household living standards survey.

The present paper applies the “recentered influence functions (RIF)” in “Oaxaca-Blinder (OB)” type decomposition as proposed by Firpo et al. (2018) to allow for the flexible distribution of the outcome variables and the non-randomness of non-farm employment that violates the classical linearity assumption.

Non-farm households have significantly higher per capita consumption expenditure than farm households for the entire distribution. The gap in expenditure is large at low percentiles and narrowing with higher percentiles. At 10th percentile, the gap is estimated at 27.1%, but it is decreasing to 11.1% at 90th percentile. Most of the gaps are explained by the differences in the observed characteristics between farm and non-farm households such as ethnicity, education, income, internal transmittances and household composition. Non-farm households are endowed with more productive factors that result in higher per capita consumption expenditure.

Gaps in ethnicity and education are found to be key predictors of the inequality in consumption expenditures between farm and non-farm households, then, government policies that are aimed at increasing access to non-farm employment and education for ethnic minorities and for rural poor households are pathways to improve rural household welfare and hence reduce inequality.

This study aims to investigate the interrelationships between charter value and market discipline in five Southeast Asian countries (ASEAN-5).

This research uses a simultaneous equations model with a three-stage least squares estimator for a sample of 79 listed banks from 2006 to 2019.

The findings show a negative two-way relationship between charter value and market discipline. More specifically, charter value can reduce market discipline. Meanwhile, a negative relationship between market discipline and charter value reemphasizes the significance of market discipline in the banking system to enhance bank charter value. Similar results still hold when using several robustness checks (e.g. subsamples, considering the global financial crisis, governance indicators and market structure).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to investigate the bidirectional relationship between bank risk and charter value in ASEAN-5. Therefore, this study would provide significant recommendations for policymakers and practitioners.

This paper aims to examine the impact of competition on firm performance using a data set of 352 firms listed on Vietnam’s stock exchanges from 2015 to 2019.

The two-step system generalized method of moments is used to estimate this impact.

The findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between competition and firm performance. Competition improves firm performance if its intensity is moderate. However, if the competition intensity exceeds the optimal level, the performance deteriorates accordingly.

The authors only studied Vietnamese firms due to the limited ability in data collection. It would be better to validate the findings using data from other transition economies.

The non-linear relationship between competition and performance implies that government should pay more attention to retaining competition at an appropriate level.

Firms contribute a lot to the prosperity of Vietnam. Therefore, the findings have a meaningful implication for Vietnam’s government to moderate competition to improve its firms’ performance.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing firsthand evidence of the impact of competition on firm performance in Vietnam – a transition economy.

This study sought to examine the interaction between rural bank performance, information and communication technology (ICT) investment, ICT diffusion and financial development.

Data were sourced from the Association of Rural Banks (ARB) Apex and World Development Indicators (WDI) for the period 2014–2020. A total of 122 rural banks were used for this study. The study adopted the two-step system generalized method of moments (SGMM) estimation technique in assessing the interactions among variables.

This study found compelling evidence to support the positive effect of ICT investment on banks’ performance (return on asset and net interest margin). Further, ICT diffusion and financial development positively influence banks’ performance. The results show a positive moderating effect exerted by ICT diffusion and financial development on the impact of bank risk (bank stability) and ICT investment on all three performance measures.

The study focuses on the rural banking sector in the Ghanaian economy, compared to related studies that examine the subject matter for commercial banks. The moderating effects of ICT diffusion and financial development are assessed to guide policy on rural banking development in Ghana.

The Indian leather industry contributes to economic growth at a significant environmental cost. Due to the rising global demand for sustainable leather products, promoting efficient input utilisation has become vital. This study measures input efficiency and its determinants for leather industry in order for it to improve its future performance.

In the first stage, bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is used for measuring efficiency and analysing firms' differences based on their geographical location, organisational structures, urban-rural location and sub-industrial groups. A second stage regression examines efficiency determinants using size, age, skill and capital-labour intensity as the explanatory variables.

Efficiency result shows a significant potential of minimising inputs by 47% provided the firms adopt best practices. West Bengal firms, urban located firms, individual and proprietorship owned firms and leather consumer goods firms are found to be relatively efficient to their counterparts. Size, skilled managerial staff and labour-intensive firms positively affect efficiency.

Construction of well-connected roads for accessing urban retail markets and provision of reliable electricity would improve efficiency of rural firms. Small-scale enterprises have a larger share in Indian leather industry; therefore, policy should focus on enhancing the firms' scale and investing in training facilities to skill employed labour for ensuring optimal use of inputs.

Previous studies on the leather industry have used the conventional DEA efficiency measurement approach. This study uses DEA bootstrapping model for robust efficiency estimates and provides consistent inferences about the determinants.

This study aims to investigate a possible transmission mechanism by which the coming of financial technology (FinTech) lending can contribute to enhance the competitiveness of commercial banks and considered to affect banks’ efficiency. In addition, this study also identifies the different responses among bank groups (based on their size, type and ownership) and the joint impact of COVID-19 on the FinTech lending-competition-efficiency nexus.

Using an unbalanced panel data set of 118 commercial banks in Indonesia over the period 2018–2022, static panel (fixed and random effect model) and 2SLS/IV data analysis were used to accommodate possibility of endogeneity problem.

The results, using the stochastic frontier analysis for cost efficiency, show that higher competition leads to cost efficiency, providing evidence to support the quiet life hypothesis. However, the emergence of FinTech lending enhanced bank competitiveness, reducing the cost efficiency of Indonesian commercial banks. The negative relationship between the FinTech lending expansion and the level of cost efficiency supports this finding. Furthermore, different responses were found to the impact of FinTech lending on bank efficiency among different bank groupings. The banks were found to be less efficient in the COVID-19 period due to the coming of FinTech lending. This study signals stakeholders, especially Indonesian commercial banks, to anticipate the impact of higher competition created by FinTech lenders, which leads to bank inefficiencies. Other variables, such as asset growth, profitability and liquidity, positively impact cost efficiency, while the nonperforming loan negatively affects cost efficiency. Finally, a higher bank credit growth and lower inflation rate boost cost efficiency.

This study highlights some policy recommendations for commercial banks to be aware of the coming of FinTech lenders since they moderate the competition-efficiency nexus by reducing the efficiency level. Hence, the government should create a more collaborative ecosystem between banks and Fintech lending and provide legal authority for the FinTech industry to support the acceleration of digital transformation in the Indonesian banking industry.

This study will contribute to the literature by carrying out the transmission from the emergence of FinTech lending to bank efficiency, which includes the moderating role of FinTech lending development on the competition-efficiency nexus in banking.

Although there are many efforts within organisations to improve the financial performance of business processes, the results of studies on the impact of internal factors on the financial performance of business processes in an organisation are inconsistent, even contradictory. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the extent and trends of the impact of factors inside companies on the financial performance of business processes and discover lessons learned to improve the financial performance of business processes.

This analysis was done through a quantitative study of listed companies in Vietnam. Pooled OLS regression, REM, FEM and robust regression were performed on 566 companies.

The results provide four main findings. First, firm size and operational efficiency strongly correlate with financial performance. Second, financial leverage has a negative, significant connection with financial performance. Third, net working capital has a positive and meaningful relationship with EPS and a negative association with ROE. Fourth, liquidity does not have any significant association with financial performance.

This study only restricts the internal factors affecting the financial performance of business processes without mentioning the external factors. Furthermore, this study is limited to one emerging country and has not been compared with companies in different countries.

The findings of this study may help inform users inside and outside the organisation to understand the factors that affect the financial performance of business processes. As a result, information users will focus more on aspects that can improve their financial performance to make informed decisions.

This study has many differences compared to previous studies. First, it focuses on the internal factors affecting the financial performance of business processes in non-financial listed companies in Vietnam, which has an emerging economy. First, it focuses on the internal factors affecting the financial performance of business processes in non-financial listed companies in Vietnam, which has an emerging economy. Second, this study analyses data in companies' financial statements for the ten years from 2012 to 2021, when the Vietnamese economy, in particular, and the world economy experienced many fluctuations due to the impact of the post-financial crisis 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, this study provides empirical evidence to support RBV, RDT theories and the trade-off theory of capital structure.

Single-party regimes increasingly use Subnational Performance Assessments (SPAs) – rankings of provinces and districts – to improve governance outcomes. SPAs assemble and publicize information on local government performance to facilitate monitoring and generate competition among officials. However, the evidence are sparse on their effects in this context. The authors argue that built-in incentive structures in centralized single-party regimes distort the positive impact of SPAs.

The staggered rollout of the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) created a natural experiment. Due to 2010 budget constraints, the first iteration of the PAPI survey covered only 30 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces before covering all in 2011. The PAPI team used matching procedures to identify a statistical twin for each province before randomly selecting one from each pair. The authors use randomization inference to compare the outcomes of these control and treatment groups in 2011.

Exposure to PAPI helped improve almost all aspects of governance; however, significant evidence of prioritization bias exist. The positive effects only persisted for the dimension of administrative procedures, which was the one area of governance that was prioritized by the central government at the time. Other dimensions only registered short-term effects.

Our study provides an examination of the impact of SPAs in a single-party regime context. In addition, the authors leverage the natural experiment to identify information effects causally. The authors also look past short-term effects to compare outcomes for five years after the treatment occurred.

This paper aims to review and develop lessons learned from the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction Local Government Self Assessment Tool (LGSAT) experience in four cities. The capacity to understand, learn from and respond to or reorganize in the face of change is at the core of urban resilience to disasters, climate change and major shocks. Self assessments, like the LGSAT, can be used to engage city stakeholders in critically assessing and understanding their capacity according to a set of standards of resilience.

City stakeholders in four cities, Hat Yai and Udon Thani, Thailand and Hue and Lao Cai, Vietnam, completed the LGSAT in an open multi-stakeholder process as part of urban climate resilience programs.

Completing the LGSAT provided important and valuable information about institutional capacity that is important for disaster risk reduction and climate change efforts. Multi-stakeholder processes allowed for greater and more sustained dialogue among groups that may not have a chance to interact regularly and helped build trust and relationships that contribute to climate resilience and disaster risk reduction efforts.

Further, the inclusion of multiple viewpoints allowed for more nuanced and novel consideration of issues and in multiple cities led to new projects that focused on building institutional and agent capacity. The LGSAT process relied on facilitation that was able to guide discussion, ensure safe spaces for dialogue and address stakeholder questions. Finally, while the tool was applied to questions of climate change in this process, there is still room to improve the tool to more adequately and directly address issues of climate change risk.

This paper aims to fill a conceptual gap in the understanding of rapidly changing characteristics of local risk, addressing how the notion of the local might be reframed, and how opportunities for multi-scale interventions for disaster risk reduction might be identified.

The paper illustrates the significance of the systems and services on which urbanization depends – water, food, energy, transport and communications – to consider the cascading impacts at multiple scales often beyond the administrative boundaries of cities, and how vulnerabilities and risks are distributed unevenly across different groups of people.

The process of rapid urbanization in the Mekong Region represents a fundamental transformation of ecological landscapes, resource flows, livelihoods and demographics. In addition to the location of urbanization, it is these transformative processes and the critical dependence on inter-linked systems that shape the overall picture of urban disaster and climate vulnerability.

By drawing on research and practical experience in two of the most rapidly urbanizing countries in the world, Thailand and Vietnam, the approach and findings have implications for understanding global patterns of urbanization.

The paper contributes to considering practical actions whether in terms of policy or project implementation for both the assessment of disaster and climate risk, and for actions to reduce vulnerability and promote resilience.

The paper draws largely from social science perspectives, highlighting the dynamism of social organization in urbanizing contexts, and the implications for risk and vulnerability.

The paper draws on original research in Thailand and Vietnam that takes urbanization as the starting point for assessing vulnerability and risk.