This study aims to make a critical review of provincial competitiveness index (PCI) in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. In this regard, the research examines relationships between PCI and the possible attraction of enterprises operating in the region, thereafter, proposes some policy recommendations to improve business environment in the region. The secondary dataset of PCI and enterprise were incorporate with primary data collected from qualitative methods to explore the effect of PCI on enterprise attraction. The results show that the enterprises which have been operating in the Central Highlands accounted for 2.2% of the total with invested capital and accounted for 1.1% of whole country in 2018. PCI highly correlates with the number of enterprises, the employees and the capital of enterprises. Consequently, in order to attract enterprises, local governments in the region need to improve sub-indexes thereby improving general PCI scores.

The conventional agricultural sector is threatened by several factors that cause unsustainable development and serious environmental damage. Circular agriculture is regarded as an essential means and is being adopted globally by many countries. Through a narrative literature review, this article aims to discuss the concepts, theories, and practices of circular agriculture, and to draw recommendations for successful implementation. The findings reveal that circular agriculture focuses on promoting resource circularity in the agro-food value chain, minimizing external inputs, reducing resource requirements, regenerating bio-ecosystems, and reducing environmental impacts to meet increasing food demands and improve producers' livelihoods. Circular agriculture differs from conventional agriculture in terms of its principles, levels of circularity, evaluation criteria, and practices. Circular agriculture practices have been adopted globally due to their economic, social, and environmental benefits. However, circular agriculture still encounters obstacles to widespread adoption, such as vested interests and existing policies. Thus, a comprehensive strategy for circular agriculture development should include rethinking and repurposing the sector development strategy; enhancing changes in producer and consumer awareness and behaviors regarding circular agriculture and organic products; increasing investments in circular technology research and development; providing more incentives for producers to access credit and extension services, produce organic products, and to reuse and recycle agricultural resources; and strengthen farmers' organizations to adopt circular farming technologies.

Contract farming has become a sustainable strategy in agriculture around the world. Formal farming contract in pig production is one of the priorities of the Vietnamese Government for livestock development. Due to the differences in husbandry methods, a comparison of the technical efficiency between contract and noncontract pig farms has not been studied in Vietnam yet. This study attempts to do so and proposes implications for the sustainable development of pig production in Vietnam. In this study, we surveyed 201 pig farms (63 contract farms and 138 noncontract farms) in Hanoi, Vietnam, and applied data envelopment analysis (DEA) with a meta-frontier. Under group frontiers, the technical efficiency of the contract and noncontract farms are 96.11% and 88.64%, respectively. However, the meta-technology ratios of the two groups are 82.30% and 99.99%, respectively, which means that contract farms’ technical efficiency is lower than noncontract farms. An interesting finding is that although the technical efficiency of contract farms is lower than noncontract farms, their annual pig income is significantly higher, making contract farming attractive to farmers. Results of Tobit regression models showed that land rent is one of the important factors that reduce the technical efficiency of both contract and noncontract farms. This result implies that the Vietnamese government should revise the land limit policy so that farms can own more land. Another finding is that the high feed price reduces the technical efficiency of noncontract farms. The policy implication from this finding is that the Vietnamese government should develop domestic raw material areas for feed production to lessen the dependence on imported raw materials from abroad, which contributes to reducing the feed prices in Vietnam.

Under the burgeoning of the digital era and global crisis of climate change and health, most countries around the world are moving to digitalize their economies. Digitalization is fundamentally changing all social and economic sectors. However, the existing studies have paid much attention on digital economy rather than digital economics. Drawing from recent literature, this paper critically reviews the understanding of digital economy by examining its meaning, main characteristics, scopes, measurement methods and identifies how digital economy differs to traditional economy. The paper, then, presents a concept and roles of digital economics and the needed suggestions for training digital economics. With this regard, the paper concludes that the education policies should be renovated in order to meet the demands on digital economy. The courses of economics should be integrated with digital economics and sharing economics.