Asia Institute - Research Publications

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Author: Fforde, Adam × End date: 2021 × Start date: 2020 ×

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    Measuring economic transformation: what to make of constant price sectoral GDP: evidence from Vietnam
    Fforde, A (World Economics Association, 2021)
    The paper discusses the analysis of economic growth and transformation and the concept of constant price sectoral GDP, usually understood to measure real factor rewards, linked to actual factor inputs. It reviews criticisms of such statistics and statistical conventions underlying GDP data, their focus upon current price factor incomes and implications of the practice of constructing constant price sectoral GDP from revalued net output (gross output less non-factor inputs). Innovatively, it shows how recalculations at constant prices of actual sectoral factor inputs at a year away from the base-year will not necessarily equal revalued gross output less non-factor inputs, the usual basis for such data. The accounting identity that requires their equality only holds for current prices. Therefore, constant price sectoral GDP data does not measure actual factor inputs. Despite this, the analytical frameworks of economists analysing structural transformation often assumes that they have, in constant price sectoral GDP, a measure of actual factor inputs (when they do not). This inhibits analyses from engaging properly with incentives, often disregarding the possibility of disequilibria by adopting a production function approach that, encouraged by the belief that constant price sectoral data measures changes in actual factor inputs, expects technical conditions to determine incentives (factor rewards). The paper shows this risk of confirmation bias by examining work on Vietnam.1
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    A Public Affair? Vietnam's State Enterprise Sector: The 'State Business Interest' and Policy History
    Fforde, A (Taylor & Francis, 2021)
    The article presents a history of the policy of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) towards state owned enterprises (SOEs). Despite an evident embrace of markets from the early 1990s, the VCP has resisted formal political change. The state sector has retained a privileged economic and political position. Policy has been made in the context of a political order where the interests of certain groups within the ostensibly hierarchical state have usually prevailed over attempts to generate coherent economic strategy. This has resulted in a situation where the formal ownership of SOEs is unclear, and real ownership is vested, apparently, in groups within a State Business Interest.