The paper examines the role of some determinants of economics, politics and institutions on the budget deficit volatility in some countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. The paper uses the fixed effects model (FEM) and the random effects model (REM) to investigate panel data of these countries in the period of 1990-2018. Moreover, the study also explores ordinary least square (OLS) to analyze time-series data for each country in the same period to make comparison among them. The economic data is collected from international financial statistics and world development indicators. The data on political variables are collected from International Country Risk Data Guide (ICRG). The empirical results both confirm that corruption and political stability are important indicators of budget deficit. Besides, the paper suggests authorities should pay more attention on improving the institutional setup of the economy in order to avoid high and unstable deficit. The findings offer new insight on the budget deficit in essence and suggest that the most important thing need to be done ahead is to strongly implement anti-corruption actions. By doing so, the status of budget deficit would be remarkably improved immediately.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of total factor productivity (TFP), institutional quality, and interactive variable between them on economic growth in 13 low-middle income countries in Asia for the period 2000-2018. The paper uses the difference Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to explore the dataset provided by the World Bank. The empirical results show that TFP and the interactive variable positively impact on the economic growth, while the institutional determinants have a negative influence. The negative effect is explained by the weak institutions in these low-middle income countries. The findings of the study suggest two points. First, the government should continue to improve TFP, which is associated with the application of technical advances, technological innovations, improvement of management methods, and skilled workers. Second, far more important, is that the authorities should pay special attention to implement institutional reform and strengthen the governance in the future. The successful experiences from Japan, Korea and Singapore will help other governments in Asian low-middle income countries to build developmental state. Probably, the developmental state actively interfere in the market to promote and realize the development goals. By doing so, these economies might overcome the so-called “middle-income trap”.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the quality of the audit and the level of stock return co-movement in the context of the Vietnamese emerging market. The empirical study is designed based on the quatitative method and deductive approach. The panel datasetincludes 256listed firmsfrom different industries,with 1115 firm-year observations on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange for the period from 2014 to 2018. In the research, we built the econometric regression model, using stock return synchronicity and audit quality as the dependent and independent variable, respectively. Some control variables are also added to the econometric regression models as they are well-documented in prior research to have an effect on stock price synchronicity. To improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients, besidetheOrdinary Least Squares, we employ theRandom Effects Modeland theFixed Effects Model for better statistical analysis of panel data set. The resultsshow that the quality of the audit is positively correlated to stock price synchronicity. This finding suggests that stock returns of companies with higher quality of the audit are more synchronous with the market. Results for other control variables also support our reasoning for the main findings.

The sea-port in Northern Vietnam accounts for around one third of the total country’s cargo throughput and for many decades has been playing an important role in the logistics system of the country. 11 container terminals currently operate in Northern Vietnam, concentrating in Haiphong city and Quang Ninh province. Despite the increasing demand, the competition among these container terminals has become increasingly more critical. In recent years, massive investments from both government and operators have been made to improve the capability of the local sea-port’s logistics infrastructure. This critically needed comprehensive research evaluates the impact of the current logistics infrastructure condition on the competitiveness of terminals and quantitatively compares the competencies of these terminals. In order to meet such requirements, the paper first summarizes the indicators of the logistics infrastructures of the sea ports before developing and testing hypotheses to reveal the correlation between the given factors and the annual throughput of container terminals in the region. Factor analysis will then be applied to score the logistics infrastructure competency of each container terminal. A significant gap between logistics infrastructures among all container terminals was not observed and the competitiveness between container terminals is mostly driven by traditional activities including cargo handling and storage. According to the results, strategic thinking will be needed to contribute to related organizations for better decisions in investment, management, and operation.