Foreign direct investments (FDI) is an important determinant of economic growth. FDI does not only contribute to the growth and economic development but also affects income through contributing to economic development and the impact on employment and salary structure of developing countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of FDI on income inequality in Vietnam. This study is the first attempt to examine the impact of FDI on income inequality under the constraints of the institution and education levels. To address the potential endogeneity problem, this study adopts Genernalized Method of Moment (GMM) model to conduct the estimation. A two-step GMM model with robust standard errors is used in the study. Empirical results show that FDI tends to increase income inequality in Vietnam and the existence of a non-linearity relationship between FDI and income inequality is also validated. Moreover, the study finds that the effects of FDI on income inequality are different depending on the level of education and institutions of the host provinces in Vietnam. The results of this study imply that, in order to ensure sustainable development, Vietnam’s policies should focus on improving the quality of economic governance and the administrative reform efforts of the government of the provinces and cities. Besides, policies should focus on increasing investment in public education and improving human capital, which not only can reduce income inequality but also can attract more FDI inflows.

The present paper applies a modified gravity model to examine the relationship between global economic sanctions (GES) and global value chains (GVC) by using a dyad panel dataset of 38 developed and 28 developing countries during the 2005–2015 period and the rich and updated database of the Global Sanction Database version 2 (Felbermayr, G., A. Kirilakha, C. Syropoulos, E. Yalcin, and Y. V. Yotov. 2020. “The Global Sanctions Data Base.” European Economic Review 129: 1–23. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103561; Kirilakha, A., G. Felbermayr, C. Syropoulos, E. Yalcin, and Y. V. Yotov. 2021. The Global Sanctions Data Base: An update that includes the years of the Trump presidency. The Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions, Edited by Peter AG van Bergeijk.). GVC participation is classified into the source of the value-added as incorporated in exports, looking both backward and forward from the view of a reference country. With distinct econometric techniques and empirical estimation strategies, our empirical results document a negative association between GESs and GVC, including backward and forward linkages. This marginal effect of sanction on backward GVC is more sizable than those on forward GVC. Furthermore, the GES-GVC nexus is only evident in the case of developing countries, while the effects of sanctions are found to be small or statistically insignificant in the developed countries. However, these marginal effects of sanctions become less sizable if the target country develops a well-developed institutional system.

Background and Purpose: Management Commitment to Service Quality (MSCQ) has been found to positively predict employee’s service quality and service behaviors in different service industries. In the context of sharing economy, the relationship between company and service providers is different from traditional employment relationship. For car-hailing service, drivers are mainly classified as contractors rather than employees. It is, therefore, necessary to understand whether MSCQ influences drivers’ service quality in a car-hailing context. Design/Methodology/Approach: Data were collected from 214 GrabCar drivers in Vietnam using online and offline survey. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis. Results: The findings suggest that three dimensions of MCSQ, namely reward system, technology support and organizational support exert significant direct impact on drivers’ service behaviors. In addition, job involvement plays an intermediary role in the relationship between MCSQ and service behaviors. Conclusion: This study expands previous research on MCSQ to the car-haling service and confirms the role of job involvement as an important mechanism to improve service quality provided by drivers. Due to the characteristics of the company-service providers’ relationship in the sharing economy, the mechanisms through which MCSQ influences providers’ service performance need to be investigated in further details.