This paper investigates firm heterogeneity in total factor productivity across Vietnam domestic private sector with sixteen manufacturing subindustries over the period 2010-2016, with a focus on labor size and based on total factor productivity (TFP); including TFP level, TFP distance, and TFP dispersion. Our results indicate that, in the private sector, labor heterogeneity on productivity are very dependent on specific manufacturing sectors, and on type of TFP. From an industrial policy perspective, there is hence productivity related reason on why Vietnamese policy makers should prefer large and extremely large firms over small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in some manufacturing and vice versa. Our results provide a support for both SMEs and large private consortiums, depending on specific manufacturing sectors. In addition, since there is a strong evidence to suggest that labor heterogeneity in TFP exists in some manufacturing sectors, the rationality behind policies to support SMEs and large firms at every manufacturing sectors seems to be questionable.

This paper examines the effects of the business environment on the labor productivity of Vietnamese manufacturing firms in the period of 2010-2018 using enterprise-level panel data drawn from Vietnamese Annual Enterprise Censuses and province-level surveys of the Provincial Competitiveness Index. Results show that in addition to traditional determinants, variables related to ease of business are found to contribute significantly to the labor productivity throughout the sample. The results support the arguments that Vietnam’s government policy in building a good business environment plays a crucial role in stimulating the economic growth, especially in terms of a broaden base for the economic development. Empirical studies about the in-depth effects of institutional changes on the labor productivity in the manufacturing industries will be fruitful research agenda.

This paper examines the labor productivity gap between exporting and non-exporting Vietnamese manufacturing firms in industrialization during the period from 2010 to 2016 using enterprise-level panel data drawn from Vietnamese Annual Enterprise Censuses. Results show that the labor productivity of the manufacturing sectors increased during the study period. It can be concluded that the firms' productivity contributed to the current industrialization in Vietnam. On top of that, some manufacturing sectors with increasing labor productivity in the study period, namely: Fabricated metal products (code 25), Basic metals (code 24), Motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (code 29), Computer, electronic and optical products (code 26), Leather and related products (code 15), Machinery and equipment not yet classified (code 28), Furniture (code 31), Electrical equipment (code 27), Other non-metallic mineral products (code 23), Other transport equipment (code 30), Wearing apparel (code 14), and Food products (code 10). Vietnam’s government policy might play a crucial role in stimulating the current industrialization by targeting selective manufacturing sectors. Decomposing labor productivity gap between export and non-exporting firms, the results show that labor productivity in the former is about 57.5 percent lower than in the latter. By using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, several firm-level variables are found to contribute significantly to the productivity gap via the endowment effect and the structural effect. Overall, the endowment effect surpasses the structural effect in the sample period. Among the factor contributions, capital stock plays the most important role. Empirical studies about the impact of the related policy on the manufacturing industries will be fruitful research agenda.