Vietnam Economic Research Project
Convenor: Dr Suiwah Leung
Successful Record
The Ho Chi Minh National Political Academy public policy research and training project came to a successful conclusion in semester one 2006. This AusAID- funded project took place over three years, and focused on ANU academics working with the Institute of Political Science at the Ho Chi Minh National Political Academy (HCMNPA), the key policy research and training centre of the Vietnamese government.
The research component of this project concentrated on the policy-making process in Vietnam in relation to the country’s foreign direct investment policy. Surveys of senior Party and government officials were conducted, and results presented in a research workshop in Hanoi in 2005, and then at a conference in Canberra in 2006. The conference also included discussions of the 2006 Vietnamese Communist Party Congress. A study tour of Malaysia and Thailand on these countries’ public institutions and policy-making processes took place in 2004.
The teaching component of this project comprised three courses on public policy delivered at the Academy, and one course delivered at the ANU. These courses address the role of governments in market economies, the private property system, public goods and market failure, politicians and the constitution in market economies, democracy and government bureaucracy, market privilege, rent-seeking behaviour, and corruption.
ANU academics involved in this project include Dr Suiwah Leung, Dr Amy Liu, Dr Deborah Cobb-Clark, Dr Tom Kompas, Professor Bob Gregory, Professor Andrew MacIntyre, as well as a number of other colleagues from the Crawford School of Economics and Government. Mr Greg Taylor, a former Australian Executive Director of the IMF, was involved as an expert consultant in Australian public policy-making.
Current Phase
The next phase of the Crawford School’s work on the Vietnamese economy takes the form of a collective Doctoral Research Project on “The effects of macroeconomic policy, trade policy and financial reform on investment and economic growth in Vietnam”. This will involve 12 or more PhD scholars working on a number of research strands. These include:
- Private savings and investments
- Central bank transparency, exchange rate flexibility, and investor confidence
- Trade and market-integrating reforms and investment
- Labour market and implications for economic growth
- Modelling and Vietnamese economy and its growth performance
It is envisaged that the PhD scholars will be working with a number of academics across the University, including those in the ANU Colleges of Asia and the Pacific, Business and Economics, and Arts and Social Sciences.
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