Investigating the competitiveness of vietnams agricultural sector a multi level approach

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ******* HOÀNG VĂN VIỆT INVESTIGATING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR: A MULTI-LEVEL APPROACH DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DISSERTATION Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ******* HOÀNG VĂN VIỆT INVESTIGATING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR: A MULTI-LEVEL APPROACH Major: Doctor Dissertation on Development Economics Code: 62310105 ACADEMIC ADVISERS: Assoc Prof Dr Trần Tiến Khai Assoc Prof Dr Từ Văn Bình A dissertation submitted to the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my father-Hoàng Văn Thọ, to my mother-Trần Thị Sang, and to my daughterHoàng Nguyễn Minh Châu “The more I study science, the more I believe in God” -Albert Einstein- ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to express my best gratitude to Prof Trần Tiến Khai, Prof Matthew Gorton, and Prof Carmen Hubbard Prof Trần Tiến Khai brings me in the research career with the initial lesson, advice, and passion Prof Matthew Gorton and Prof Carmen Hubbard raise me up to the international research standards with the advice, the lesson, and the research cooperation opportunities Second, I am deeply thankful to my teachers: Dr Phạm Khánh Nam, Prof Nguyễn Trọng Hoài, Prof Lionel Hubbard, Prof Peter Goldsmith, Prof Từ Văn Bình, Dr Trương Đăng Thụy, and Prof Nguyễn Ngọc Vinh for the lessons, guides, and advice Third, I am really indebted to my colleagues: Mr Nguyễn Khánh Duy, Ms Nguyễn Quỳnh An, Ms Nguyễn Hồng Mai, Ms Nguyễn Phan Trúc Phương, and Mr Hồ Minh Chí They contribute the important parts to my achievement of this dissertation Especially, I would express my gratitude and respect to Prof Nguyễn Đông Phong who indirectly empower me with the strategic and excellent policies for young lecturers Moreover, I am thankful to the board of professors, the independent reviewers, journal editorial boards, and journal reviewers for their constructive reviewing and comments I am wholeheartedly grateful to my family for their love, trust, support, sharing, and encouragement This dissertation would be never completed without them Ho Chi Minh City, December 2017 Hoàng Văn Việt DECLARATION I, Hoàng Văn Việt, declare that the PhD dissertation entitled “Investigating and Comparing the Agricultural Competitiveness of Vietnam” strictly conforms to the regulations and the rules of Ministry of Education and Training and the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City This dissertation contains no material that has been submitted previously, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic degree or diploma Except where otherwise indicated, this dissertation is my own work Ho Chi Minh City, December, 2017 Hoàng Văn Việt i TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF APPENDICES viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background 1.2 Research gap identification 1.3 Research objectives and questions 1.4 Brief of research methodology, scope, and data 12 1.5 Expected significance and contribution 14 1.6 The structure and outline of the dissertation 16 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 18 2.1 Definition of competitiveness 18 2.2 Evolution of competitiveness theory 23 2.3 Frameworks of competitiveness 34 2.3.1 Economic and production indicators 36 2.3.2 Trade performance indices 47 2.4 Summary and the general framework of the dissertation 56 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA 60 3.1 The trade performance indices 60 3.1.1 Revealed comparative advantage (RCA) 60 3.1.2 Relative trade advantage (RTA) 61 ii 3.1.3 Normalized revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) 62 3.1.4 Dynamics of comparative advantage indicators 64 3.1.5 Complementarity and substitutability analysis 68 3.1.6 Consistency analysis 70 3.1.7 The data for the trade performance indices 71 3.2 The economic and production indicators in the PAM model 72 3.2.1 Private profitability (PP - D) 73 3.2.2 Private cost ratio (PCR) 73 3.2.3 Social profitability (SP - H) 74 3.2.4 Domestic resource cost (DRC) 74 3.2.5 Social cost-benefit (SCB) 75 3.2.6 Nominal protection coefficient (NPC) 75 3.2.7 Effective protection coefficient (EPC) 76 3.2.8 Profitability coefficient (PC) 76 3.2.9 Subsidy ratio to producers (SRP) 77 3.2.10 The data and estimations for the PAM indicators 77 3.2.11 Sensitivity analysis of the PAM indicators 82 CHAPTER 4: VIETNAM’S AGRICULTURAL TRADE COMPETITIVENESS: THE CROSS-SECTIONS ANALYSIS 84 4.1 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the RCA 84 4.1.1 Measuring the static competitiveness 84 4.1.2 Analyzing the dynamics of the competitiveness indicators 86 4.2 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the RTA 89 iii 4.2.1 Measuring the static competitiveness 89 4.2.2 Analyzing the dynamics of the RTA indicators 91 4.3 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness by the NRCA 95 4.3.1 Measuring the static competitiveness 95 4.3.2 Analyzing the dynamics of of the NRCA indicators 95 4.4 The consistencies of the trade performance indices: sector-ranking 99 CHAPTER 5: THE ASEAN COUNTRIES’ AGRICULTURAL TRADE PATTERNS: THE CROSS-COUNTRIES ANALYSIS 102 5.1 The agricultural international trade performance of ASEAN countries 103 5.1.1 Agricultural competitiveness by the RCA 103 5.1.2 Agricultural competitiveness by the RTA 105 5.1.3 Agricultural competitiveness by NRCA index 106 5.1.4 Analyzing the dynamics of agricultural competitiveness indicators 108 5.2 The trade agricultural complementarity of the ASEAN countries 110 5.2.1 The agricultural trade complementarity of the ASEAN countries 110 5.2.2 The agricultural export similarity of the ASEAN countries 111 5.2.3 The agricultural complementarity by Spearman coefficients 113 5.2.4 The impact of external markets and factors 116 5.3 The consistencies of the trade performance indices: country-ranking 118 CHAPTER 6: THE COMPETITIVENESS OF ALTERNATIVE AGRICULTURAL CROPS: A CASE STUDY OF BEN TRE 120 6.1 Measuring the comparative advantage of the alternative crops 121 6.1.1 The comparative advantage of rice 121 iv 6.1.2 The comparative advantage of coconut 124 6.1.3 The comparative advantage of pomelo 126 6.2 Indicators and sectors consistency and comparison analysis 129 6.3 Sensitive analysis of the comparative advantage indicators 132 6.3.1 Climate changes 132 6.3.2 Water and land charges 133 6.3.3 The parameters of assuming changes of the variables 134 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 137 7.1 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness 137 7.2 The ASEAN countries’ agricultural trade patterns 139 7.3 Competitiveness of alternative agricultural production systems in Ben Tre 141 7.4 Theoretical analysis and conclusion 143 7.5 Policy implications 145 Re-structuring the agricultural production and trade pattern 146 Maintaining the rankings of strong competitiveness sectors 147 Expanding and enforcing the regional and global integration 148 Building the agricultural production master plans 150 Promoting sustainable agriculture and adapting to climate changes 151 LIST OF MY PUBLICATIONS & PROJECTS LIST OF REFERENCES APPENDICES 28 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1: The evolution of competitiveness theory 33 Table 2-2: The measures of competitiveness by level of analysis 35 Table 3-1: The accounting structure of policy analysis matrix 72 Table 3-2: Sample descriptions for the PAM indicators 78 Table 4-1: Vietnam’s top agricultural competitiveness by the RCA 85 Table 4-2: The change of the RCA indicators position between 1997 and 2014 86 Table 4-3: The OLS estimation results for the RCA indicators over three periods 87 Table 4-4: The classifications of RCA values and the interpretations 88 Table 4-5: The M-Shorrocks and Markov transition matrix for the RCA values 88 Table 4-6: The top gaining and losing trends of the RCA indicators 89 Table 4-7: Vietnam’s top agricultural competitiveness by the RTA 90 Table 4-8: The changes of the RTA indicator ranks between 1997 and 2014 91 Table 4-9: The OLS estimation results for the RTA indicators over three periods 92 Table 4-10: The classification of the RTA values and the interpretations 93 Table 4-11: The M-Shorrocks and Markov transition matrix for the RTA values 93 Table 4-12: The top gaining and losing trends of the RTA indicators 94 Table 4-13: Vietnam’s top agricultural trade competitiveness by the NRCA 96 Table 4-14: The changes of the NRCA indicator ranks between 1997 and 2014 96 Table 4-15: The OLS estimation results for the NRCA indicators over time 97 Table 4-16: The classification of the of NRCA values and the interpretations 97 Table 4-17: The Markov transition probability matrix for the NRCA indicators 98 Table 4-18: The top gaining and losing trends of the NRCA indicators 99 Table 4-19: The consistencies the RCA, the RTA, and the NRCA by sector-ranking 100 Table 5-1: The agricultural competitiveness of the ASEAN countries by the RCA 104 Table 5-2: The number of strong agricultural competitive sectors by the RCA 105 Table 5-3: The agricultural competitiveness of the ASEAN countries by the RTA 106 Second, if the rice, coconut, and pomelo private producers have to pay the water and land charges the private rice producer will get loss while coconut and pomelo producers still obtain profits The payments of the water and land charges to the government not impact on the PAM indicators at social prices Finally, the sensitivity of the PAM indicators to the assuming changes of output prices, fertilizer prices, land rent prices, production productivity, and the real effective exchange rate by the scope of ±5, ±10, ±15 and ±20 percent The results, generally, show that rice output price and productivity decreases make the private producers get lost at the point of 10 percent only All other comparative advantage indicators at the private and social prices are stable in the nature or still in the interval {0, 1} with the assuming changes of the variables by that scope CHAPTER CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS The dissertation has four research objectives The authors have successfully obtained these research objectives and the research results can be shortly concluded and presented as follows: 8.1 Vietnam’s agricultural trade competitiveness Vietnam, generally, has strong comparative advantages in crop sectors such as spices, rice, coffee, tea & mate, fruit & nut and vegetables; and fishery sectors such as fish and crustaceans whilst it has weak competitiveness in livestock sectors such as live animal, meat, eggs & birds; and processed food sectors such as chocolate, cheese, and processed meat & foods In other words, the country has the agricultural export strategy and competitiveness pattern based on the natural-resource-intensive and primary agricultural sectors with relatively low values added In overall, the country loses the competitiveness in the initial strong competitive sectors whilst it gains the competitiveness in the initial weak competitive sectors The country stably maintains the degrees of competitiveness of the agricultural sectors The comparative disadvantage sectors and strong comparative advantage sectors are the most stable to remain in their initial classes of competitiveness The trend analysis reveals that Vietnam obtains the gaining trends in 19 agricultural sectors by the RCA, 12 agricultural sectors by the RTA, and 14 agricultural sectors by the NRCA The country, however, has the losing trends in 23 agricultural sectors by the RCA, 28 agricultural sectors by the RTA, and in 37 agricultural sectors by the NRCA The result also proves that, in overall, Vietnam’s export strategy and comparative advantage pattern is relatively dependent on the natural-resource-intensive and traditional agricultural sectors such as crop and fishery sectors over time Though there are changes in the competitiveness rankings of the strongest competitive commodities and the convergent pattern in the agricultural competitiveness over time 16 which may be considered as a small improvement of the export and economic growth pattern, the natural-resource-intensive and traditional products are the strongest competitive and main agricultural export sectors of Vietnam The natural-resourceintensive export strategy should be important in the initial period of industrialization, economic development, and globalization but not be appropriate and effective in the medium and long terms The ASEAN countries’ agricultural trade patterns Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are in the strongest agricultural competitive group with the largest number of agricultural competitive sectors and the strong agricultural competitive sectors, high rankings of agricultural competitiveness; Malaysia, Philippines, and Cambodia are in the medium agricultural competitive group; while Singapore and Brunei are in the weak agricultural competitive group The ASEAN countries, in overall, achieve the strongest competitiveness in crop sectors, wood sectors, and fishery sectors such as rice, natural rubber, spices, fixed vegetable fats and oils, wood in chips, fuel wood, fish, and crustaceans 8.1 The ASEAN countries, generally, have the convergent patterns in agricultural competitiveness except for Indonesia, Cambodia, and Brunei Indonesia has divergent or unidentified patterns of agricultural competitiveness The ASEAN countries successfully maintain the rankings of the agricultural competitiveness over time The ASEAN countries are weakly complementary or strongly competing in the agricultural trade on the world markets by the TCI In other words, the agricultural export patterns of the ASEAN countries weakly match the agricultural import patterns of the partner countries in the ASEAN region in comparison with the agricultural commodity composition of the word trade In addition, the ASEAN countries are becoming less complementary or more competing The results by the ESI, however, show the low degree of similarity in the agricultural export patterns of the ASEAN countries This means that these countries are relatively complementary in exporting the agricultural products to the world market The different result between the TCI and the ESI indicates that the ASEAN countries are not complementary in matching their partners’ agricultural import demand while they are complementary in supplying agricultural products to the world markets Spearman’s correlation coefficients for the competitiveness indicators, in general, show that the ASEAN countries’ agricultural competitiveness patterns are relatively substitutable on the world markets In conclusion, though Vietnam has relatively strong competitiveness in agriculture it is facing hard competitions from the regional countries such as Thailand and Indonesia in both domestic and global markets These competitions or substitutability in agriculture seem to be increase over time Therefore, the country should utilize its 17 strong competitive agricultural commodities such as wood in chips, spices, rice, natural rubber, coffee, crustaceans, and fish to develop its market shares in the local and regional markets Moreover, Vietnam needs to enhance and take advantage of the international economic relationships such as APEC, WTO, TPP-CPTPP, the ASEAN’s relationships with India, Australia, China and bilateral trade agreements with United States, Japan, Chile, Korea, Eurasian Economic Union, and EU Competitiveness of alternative agricultural products in Ben Tre Pomelo achieves the strongest comparative advantage with the PCR of 0.16, the DRC of 0.13, and the SCB of 0.15, coconut obtains the medium comparative advantage the PCR of 0.53 and the DRC of 0.38, and the SCB of 0.42 while rice has the weakest comparative advantage with the PCR of 0.92, the DRC of 0.63, and the SCB of 0.71 8.2 The rice, coconut, and pomelo are not, generally, supported or protected by the government with the NPCO values of 0.72, 0.59, and 0.69, respectively These agricultural production systems may obtain, however, the subsidy by the government with the NPCI values of 0.85 for rice, 0.85 for coconut, and 0.86 for pomelo The EPC and PC values of rice, coconut, and pomelo are smaller than the unity and the results indicate the net disincentives of the government for the rice, coconut, and pomelo production systems The study, moreover, confirms the overall transfers from the private producers of rice, coconut, and pomelo sectors to the general society with the SRP values of -0.25, -0.33, and -0.29, respectively Especially, the social profit indicators are higher than the private profit indicators It means that the society obtains more benefits from these agricultural production activities than the private actors This result seems to be different from the other countries, especially the agricultural sectors in OECD countries In overall, rice is the weakest competitive and the most sensitive production system to the changes in the climate and other market and policy conditions Pomelo is the strongest competitive and definitely stable production system to the changes of market and policy conditions Pomelo is, however, potential to be relatively impacted by the climate change Coconut is the medium competitive sector and relatively stable production system to the changes in climate, market and policy conditions Pomelo results in the greatest private and social profits while coconut can generate a potential coconut processing cluster with stable private and social profits The results suggest that rice arable land should be transferred into pomelo and coconut crops to achieve more effective and sustainable results for private producer and society However, the crop transferring cost should be taken into account due to the big initial investments of pomelo and coconut and the crop’s adaptations to the natural conditions 18 This dissertation, however, has limitations for not identifying the determinants or factors of the agricultural competitiveness by using the econometric approach The main reasons for the limitations are (i) the unavailability of data and variables at the sector level, namely at 3-digit level in SITC Rev over the period The national variables seem to not work for this regression model; (ii) the main objective of this thesis is to investigate and compare the agricultural competitiveness by the crosssections analysis and the cross-countries analysis Theoretical analysis and conclusion The literature review concludes that there are various approaches to investigate the competitiveness according to six main disciplines such as: (i) the economic and production indicators; (ii) the trade performance indices; (iii) the determinants of competitiveness; (iv) the multidimensional frameworks; (v) the value chain performance approaches; and (vi) the benchmarking This thesis contributes to the economic literature by providing the evidences and discussions of the consistency of the trade indices in Vietnam and the ASEAN countries and the comparison of trade and economic approaches in Ben Tre 8.3 The consistency tests between the competitiveness indices of the RCA, the RTA, and the NRCA in cases of Vietnam by cross-sections and the ASEAN countries by cross-countries over the period 1997-2015 show that these trade indices are strongly consistent as cardinal measures and dichotomous measures while they are weakly consistent as ordinal measures The RCA and the NRCA are perfectly consistent as dichotomous measures due to the derivation of the NRCA from the neutral-point of the RCA whilst they are the weakest consistent as ordinal measures In other words, the trade indices are strongly consistent in identifying the degrees of the agricultural competitiveness and determining whether a country obtains the competitiveness in an agricultural sector while they are weakly consistent in ranking the competitiveness PAM indicators seem to be inconsistent and contrary to the trade performance indices in measuring and explaining the competitiveness The potential explanation is that the PAM indicators identify the social benefits and welfare They are, therefore, dependent on the output prices positively and the supply quantity negatively On the other hand, the trade performance indices measure the relative market shares and they are dependent on the output prices negatively and the supply quantity positively The PAM and trade performance approaches, in conclusion, investigate the different perspectives of competitiveness based on the data sources, the research and policy objectives and conditions PAM indicators employ the production data to measure the comparative advantages based on the high output prices, high value-added, and low input costs to generate the higher private and social profitability and welfare while the trade indices use the revealed trade data to assess the comparative advantages of the 19 agricultural trade flows based on the large export quantity, relative high market shares, and low prices to improve the private and social profitability and welfare Policy implications Based on the research results, the thesis would suggest the general policy and strategy implications to sustainably develop the agricultural sectors and improve the private and social welfare in Vietnam as follows: (i) re-structuring the production and trade pattern of Vietnam’s agricultural sector; (ii) maintaining the competitiveness rankings of the key agricultural sectors; (iii) Expanding and enforcing the regional and global integration; (iv) building the master crop plans; and (v) promoting sustainable agriculture and adapting to climate changes 8.4 Re-structuring the agricultural production and trade pattern In general, the primary and natural-resource-intensive agricultural production and trade pattern may be important and appropriate in the initial period of economic innovation and industrialization The dynamics analysis also proves that Vietnam’s export strategy and comparative advantage pattern is relatively dependent on the natural-resource-intensive and traditional agricultural sectors such as crop and fishery sectors over time Though there are changes in the competitiveness rankings of the strongest competitive commodities and the convergent pattern in the agricultural competitiveness over the period 1997-2014 which may be considered as a small improvement of the export and economic growth pattern, the natural-resourceintensive and traditional products are the strongest competitive and main agricultural export sectors of Vietnam The natural-resource-intensive export strategy should be important in the initial period of industrialization, economic development, and globalization but not be appropriate and effective in the medium and long terms Especially, in the current process of globalization and modernization with the fierce competition and strict demand for food, Vietnam has to re-structure the agricultural production and trade pattern to the large value-added and high productivity sectors based on the high technology agricultural and modern management process Re-structuring the agricultural production and trade pattern requires Vietnam to implement the actions: (i) identifying the potential agricultural commodities which are preferred by the consumers and suitable for the local natural conditions based on the economic, social, and environmental indicators; (ii) planning cultivated areas and transferring other products to these potential sectors with taking account of the transforming cost and initial investment; (iii) employing high agricultural technology and international quality standards; (iv) enhancing the horizontal and vertical linkages in the sector; and (v) promoting the local and export markets 20 Maintaining the rankings of strong competitiveness sectors The empirical results indicate that Vietnam has been losing competitiveness in its key and strong competitiveness sectors such as rice, crustaceans, tea, rubber, silk, and coffee Developing the science, technology, and system management in agriculture are the significant keys to improve the agricultural product quality and value The science, technology, and system management indicators may be measured by the number of experts, research & development spending, capital and investment for agricultural science, technology, and system management; share of agricultural production; science and technology patents; science and technology infrastructures The result in Chapter shows that Vietnam science and technology indicators are generally lower than Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines Therefore, Vietnam’s government, enterprises, and farmers need to increase the investment and spending in the agricultural science, technology, and system management In conclusion, Vietnam may maintain the competitive advantage degrees and ranks of these important agricultural sectors by: (i) identifying the key agricultural sectors with the high quality and strong competitiveness to develop in large scales with the efficient master plans; (ii) researching, preparing, and producing the good quality seeds or varieties in the mass scopes; (iii) employing high technology, international quality standards and production process; (iv) innovating the appearance of agricultural products, packages, and labels; (v) promoting the private brand names and collective brand names for these agricultural products; and (vi) researching and applying the modern and effective processing and preserving science and technology to increase the agricultural product values Expanding and enforcing the regional and global integration Vietnam is a member of the ASEAN The region is expanding and enforcing its cooperation scopes and degrees The research results in Chapter allow to recommend that, in order to take advantage of the opportunities in the regional economic integration, the ASEAN countries with strong agricultural competitiveness need to specialize in and maintain the competitive advantage degrees and ranks of their important agricultural sectors such as rice, natural rubber, spices, fixed vegetable fats and oils, wood in chips, fuel wood, fish, and crustaceans by upgrading product quality standards, improving production productivities, enhancing the global market linkages, and reducing the input costs The countries with weak agricultural competitiveness such as Singapore and Brunei should specialize in the processed and high-value agricultural sectors based on the modern technology and abundant capital The ASEAN countries, however, seem to be relatively substitutable in agricultural products The study suggests that the ASEAN countries should cooperate to take advantage of their economic resources and internal markets as a “common domestic” 21 market to enhance the competitiveness and predominantly focus on the external markets based on the global trade and economic agreements and partnerships of the association and the member countries such as the RCEP, the TPP-CPTPP, and their bilateral free trade agreements Moreover, the ASEAN countries should specialize in producing and exporting the agricultural products with comparative advantages and import the uncompetitive products to enhance the regional trades, effectively utilize their economic resources, and create higher social welfare based on the elimination of import and export restrictions and the reduction in production subsidies Vietnam is a member of the ASEAN country The country’s agricultural trade pattern is relatively complementary to Brunei, Philippines, and Indonesia whilst it is competing with Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore in agricultural products Therefore, Vietnam should take advantage of the agricultural markets of Brunei, Philippines, and Indonesia by the agricultural commodities with the comparative advantages The country, however, should cooperate with Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore to develop the external markets and avoid the competition in the regional market, especially Vietnam’s local market Moreover, China (including Hong Kong), the U.S., Japan, India, EU, Korea, and Australia are the biggest agricultural markets Thus, Vietnam, cooperating with the ASEAN countries, should enhance the stronger partnership (such as the RCEP, the TPP- CPTPP), expand the general and bilateral free trade agreements to enhance the greater trade flows to the global markets Building the agricultural production master plans The incomes and livings of the farmers depend on the profits of their crops In turn, the profits are impacted by the price and quantity of the products The questions are what crops to choose, why to choose the crops, and how to transfer the crops? Responding to these questions require the farmers, the policy makers, and the enterprises to have the reference indicators which may capture the various components and perspectives in the studied cases The agricultural competitiveness indicators by the PAM model may significantly satisfy the issues in the case of Ben Tre of Vietnam The research results measuring the alternative agricultural production systems in chapter show that rice has the weakest comparative advantage by the PAM indicators while it obtains the strongest competitiveness by the trade indices On the contrary, pomelo obtains the strongest comparative advantage by the PAM indicators while it has the weakest competitiveness by the trade indices Coconut obtains the medium comparative advantage by both approaches Moreover, coconut supplies materials to generate a strong coconut processing cluster in Ben Tre province Especially, coconut crop may effectively adapt to the changes in climates and other natural conditions As the results, it is essential to build the agricultural production master plans to increase the incomes and social welfares of farmers sustainably based on the competitiveness indicators with the following process: (i) identifying and 22 selecting the strategic and potential agricultural products in the studied areas; (ii) fulfilling a comprehensive competitiveness report of these selected agricultural sectors with the consideration of transferring costs The report needs to adequately capture the economic, social, and environmental perspectives and components; (iii) planning the areas, quantities, varieties, and cultivation models of the crops which are suitable for the natural and market conditions; (iv) regulating and supporting these famers to transfer or develop the selected crops by training, cooperating, and input and output supports; and (v) linking the farmers to the local and global markets by the contract farming and value chains Promoting sustainable agriculture and adapting to climate changes The result in Chapter shows that the climate change of the drought and salinity intrusion in the Mekong Delta will decrease the agricultural competitiveness by reducing the productivity of the sectors such as rice and pomelo Moreover, the land degradation caused by overusing pesticide, fertilizers, and other inputs can relatively impact on the agricultural productivity and the agricultural competitiveness as the result, especially in the long term (Bernal et al., 2012) It is estimated that by 2080 the cereal production may be decreased by about 2-4 percent and the price will increase by 13-45 percent Vietnam is among the countries which are predicted to be the most impacted by the climate change due to its long coastline, high concentration of population and economic activities in coastal and river areas, and the strong dependence on the agriculture, natural resources, and forestry (Tran, 2011) Climate change includes the scenarios of temperature increase, rainfall pattern change, sea level rise, drought, flooding, and salinity intrusion and it is recognized as the global issue The possible effects of the climate change on agriculture consist of (1) impacts on agro-meteorology; (2) impacts on crop growth rate; (3) impacts on crop water demand; (4) impacts on growth and spread of detrimental pests; (5) impacts on growing seasons; (6) impacts on crop geographic distribution; (7) impacts of sea-level rise; (8) impacts on rice and maize output; and (9) impacts on animal husbandry (FAO, 2011) The climate change adaptation of agriculture, therefore, will result in various benefits such as keeping policy relevant, informing mitigation targets, informing investment, rewarding early adopters, and focusing on climate risk management (Howden et al., 2007) Bryan et al (2013) find out that who are more likely to adopt new practices and adapt to climate changes are wealthier households Thus, it is necessary to predict the scenarios of the climate changes and estimate the possible impacts of the scenarios or events on the agricultural productions The results of the prediction and estimation will be the background for adapting the agriculture to the climate changes The potential solutions to adapting the agriculture to the climate changes may be reviewed and suggested as follows (Howden et al., 2007; Anwar et al., 2013; Ignaciuk, 2015): 23 In the short term: The solutions in the short term aim to mitigate the negative impacts of the climate changes and manage the risks at farm levels (i) Employing the new or modified farming techniques and processes: altering the inputs and varieties, adjusting farming management, diversifying the agricultural systems, changing landuse practices, adapting livestock management as a response to episodes of poor crop yields, and adapting strategies for improved nutrient and pest control management; (ii) Forecasting the climate, estimating the impacts, and developing the model to reduce production risk; (iii) Improving risk management systems: insurance, forecasting, and income diversification; (iv) Information dissemination and Extension services and monitoring; and (v) Policy and public investment In the medium term to the long term: The short term initiatives will affect the design and content of the medium term to long term solutions The farmers should alleviate the impacts of the climate change quickly before the medium term to long term solutions are fulfilled effectively The possible measures to decrease to serious vulnerability to the impacts of climate change which are anticipated in the medium term to long term can be as follows: (i) modeling and forecasting climate changes in the medium term to long term; (ii) simulating agricultural techniques that allow scaling up knowledge from gene to cell to organisms and finally to the management systems; (iii) empowering the relation between weather forecasters, policy makers, and extension agents to ensure suitable farm-level responses in the field to climate change; (iv) investing the infrastructures such as transportation system, storage and preservation systems, irrigation and other water management, land-use management; and (v) public policy and public investment initiatives for developing of the agricultural science and technology 24 CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự - Hạnh phúc TP Hồ Chí Minh, ngày 18 tháng năm 2018 TRANG THÔNG TIN VỀ NHỮNG ĐÓNG GÓP MỚI VỀ MẶT HỌC THUẬT, LÝ LUẬN CỦA LUẬN ÁN Tên luận án: Investigating The Competitiveness of Vietnam’s Agricultural Sector: A Multi-Level Approach Chuyên ngành: Kinh tế phát triển Mã số: Nghiên cứu sinh: Hồng Văn Việt Khóa: 2013 Cơ sở đào tạo: Trường Đại học Kinh tế TP Hồ Chí Minh Người hướng dẫn luận án: PGS TS Trần Tiến Khai PGS TS Từ Văn Bình Nội dung ngắn gọn đóng góp mặt học thuật, lý luận, luận điểm rút từ kết nghiên cứu, khảo sát luận án; Nghiên cứu sinh ký tên Ghi chú: nghiên cứu sinh làm tiếng Việt tiếng Anh Những đóng gói điểm Luận Án Luận án nghiên cứu phân tích lợi cạnh tranh ngành hàng nông nghiệp Việt Nam mức số hệ thống SITC Rev giai đoạn 1997-2014 số thương lại quốc tế khác RCA, RTA NRCA Kết nghiên cứu cho thấy tranh tổng quát lợi cạnh tranh vị cạnh tranh ngành nông nghiệp, số tham khảo quan trọng có tính chiến lược nhà lập sách, doanh nghiệp kinh doanh nơng sản người nông dân để đưa định sách, kinh doanh đầu tư nơng nghiệp Đây nghiên cứu cố gắng đánh giá giải thích thay đổi cấu trúc xu tương lai lợi cạnh tranh ngành nơng nghiệp Việt Nam q trình hội nhập kinh tế toàn cầu cách tiếp cận khác hồi quy OLS, ma trận Markov phân tích xu hướng Ngồi ra, luận án cung cấp kết nghiên cứu thực nghiệm số lực cạnh tranh thương mại quốc tế tình ngành nông nghiệp Việt Nam theo cách so sánh ngành Luận án đánh giá tính tương đồng số lợi cạnh tranh thương mại tình Việt Nam theo so sánh ngành Ở phạm vi quốc tế, Việt Nam trình hội nhập kinh khu vực tế quốc mạnh mẽ Vì vậy, việc hiểu vị lợi cạnh tranh ngành nông nghiệp Việt Nam bối cảnh hình thành cộng đồng kinh tế ASEAN (AEC) so sánh với quốc gia khu vực cần thiết Luận án nghiên cứu việc phân tích cấu trúc lợi cạnh tranh, vị cạnh tranh thay đổi lợi cạnh tranh 61 ngành hàng nông nghiệp quốc gia ASEAN mức số giai đoạn 19972015 tiếp tiếp cận thương mại quốc tế Đặc biệt, luận án cố gắng xác định xem liệu nước ASEAN hỗ trợ hay thay (cạnh tranh) thị trường nông sản quốc tế số TCI, ESI hệ số tương quan Spearman Kết nghiên cứu sở quan trọng cho chiến lược phát triển doanh nghiệp, sách thương mại hội nhập quốc gia Luận án mở rộng kết nghiên cứu thực nghiệm mơ hình lý thuyết kinh tế quốc tế tình khu vực ASEAN Nghiên cứu cung cấp thêm minh chứng tính tương đồng số lực cạnh tranh thương mại tình quốc gia ASEAN theo so sánh quốc gia Các số lực cạnh tranh thương mại đánh giá kết thị phần ngành hàng quốc gia mức tổng góc nhìn thương mại Tuy nhiên, mơ hình khơng lý giải nguồn gốc lợi cạnh tranh khơng giải giải thích lợi cạnh tranh góc độ lợi ích hay phúc lợi mà người nơng dân, doanh nghiệp phủ quan tâm định sản xuất mặt hàng nơng sản Vì vậy, luận án mở rộng cách tiếp cận phạm vi ngành hàng sản xuất so sánh cách tiếp cận khác Cụ thể, nghiên cứu đo lường lợi so sánh ngành hàng nông sản ngạnh tranh vùng đất canh tác nông nghiệp bao gồm ngành hàng lúc gạo, dừa bưởi Danh xanh Bến Tre số kinh tế sản xuất mơ hình PAM Đồng thời, luận án phân tích độ nhạy cảm hay biến động số lợi cạnh tranh ba ngành hàng điều kiện môi trường, thị trường sách thay đổi Đặc biệt, luận án đo lường ba ngành hàng số thương mại so sánh cách tiếp cận khác đo lường lợi cạnh tranh ngành nông nghiệp CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự - Hạnh phúc TP Hồ Chí Minh, ngày 18 tháng năm 2018 TRANG THƠNG TIN VỀ NHỮNG ĐÓNG GÓP MỚI VỀ MẶT HỌC THUẬT, LÝ LUẬN CỦA LUẬN ÁN Tên luận án: Investigating The Competitiveness of Vietnam’s Agricultural Sector: A Multi-Level Approach Chuyên ngành: Kinh tế phát triển Mã số: Nghiên cứu sinh: Hoàng Văn Việt Khóa: 2013 Cơ sở đào tạo: Trường Đại học Kinh tế TP Hồ Chí Minh Người hướng dẫn luận án: PGS TS Trần Tiến Khai PGS TS Từ Văn Bình Nội dung ngắn gọn đóng góp mặt học thuật, lý luận, luận điểm rút từ kết nghiên cứu, khảo sát luận án; Nghiên cứu sinh ký tên Ghi chú: nghiên cứu sinh làm tiếng Việt tiếng Anh The dissertation’s significance and contribution The dissertation is the initial attempt to measure the static comparative advantage of all agricultural items with 61 commodity groups at 3-digit level in the SITC Rev over the period 1997-2014 by various trade performance indices of the RCA, the RTA, and the NRCA The result will provide the overview picture of Vietnam’s agricultural comparative advantages and the competitiveness rankings of the agricultural commodity groups which are the key and strategic indicators for policymakers, agribusiness enterprises, and farmers to make agricultural policies and business decisions The dissertation is the first research trying to explain how does Vietnam’s agricultural comparative advantage patterns change over time at the different stages of its global integration and predicts the trends in the future by employing different approaches of OLS regression, Markov matrices, and trend analysis The study, moreover, provides the empirical tests of the various trade performance indices and dynamics analysis models in the case of Vietnam based on the cross-sections comparison The research provides the theoretical analysis of the consistency between these trade performance indices by the cross-sections rankings in case of Vietnam Vietnam, moreover, has been strongly and deeply integrated into the regional and global market and economy Therefore, it is important to understand the rankings and competitiveness of Vietnam’s agriculture under the analysis and comparison with the ASEAN countries This dissertation is the novel research which investigates the agricultural competitiveness patterns, agricultural competitiveness rankings, and agricultural competitiveness dynamics of the ASEAN countries with 61 commodity groups at 3-digit level in the SITC Rev over the period 1997-2015 by various trade performance indices Especially, the dissertation tries to identify whether the ASEAN countries complementary or substitutable on the world agricultural market over the regional and global integration process by employing the trade complementarity and similarity indices and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients for competitiveness indices These findings provide the vital complementarity and competitiveness indicators for organizational business strategies, national development and trade policies, and regional integration programs In addition, the research expands the empirical studies of the complementarity and competitiveness indices in the ASEAN context based on the cross-countries comparison The study tests the theoretical analysis of the consistency between these trade indices by the cross-sections rankings in the case study of the ASEAN countries The trade indices are able to be successful to assess the agricultural performance competitiveness at the country aggregation level and the export aspect They, however, cannot explain why the country obtains the relative market shares on the world markets and fail to indicate the welfare and benefits aspects by which the farmers, agribusiness enterprises, and the agricultural governments make crop choice decisions, development strategies, and agricultural policies It is, moreover, significant and novel to compare the different approaches of measuring competitiveness, the trade performance indices and the economic indicators This thesis is the first and new effort to measure and compare the competitiveness of competing crops of rice, coconut, and pomelo in the same arable lands of Ben Tre province by the PAM indicators The research, moreover, analyzes the sensitivities of the competitiveness indicators according to the climate, market, and policy changes Especially, the thesis measures the competitiveness of rice, coconut, and pomelo by trade performance indices The result is used to theoretically compare and illustrate the difference and the implication of trade indices and economic indicators ... LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AEC: ASEAN Economic Community AFTA: ASEAN Free Trade Area APEC: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations CA: Comparative Advantage... consist of the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) of Balassa (1965), the Relative Trade Advantage (RTA) of Vollrath (1991), and the Normalized Revealed Comparative Advantage (NRCA) of Yu et al (2009)... Vietnam by the RCA 58 Appendix 9: Agricultural comparative advantages of Vietnam by the RTA 59 Appendix 10: Agricultural comparative advantages of Vietnam by the NRCA 60 Appendix 11: ASEAN countries’