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This paper investigates the interconnection between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power, green credit, and core competence of commercial banks in Vietnam. Our data sample consists of 373 annual observations from 2010 to 2021. We employ a dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments to analyze an unbalanced panel comprised of 373 annual observations from 2010 to 2021. The findings indicate an inverse U-shape relationship between CEO overpower and commercial banks' core competence. Moreover, the study reports that banks with green lending activities reduce core competence by about 0.1598 points more than other banks. In addition, the results indicate that CEO power moderates the relationship between green credit and core competence. Our findings align with stewardship, management entrenchment, first-mover advantage, stakeholder theories, and prior literature. The study has practical implications for policymakers to develop the banking system sustainably in emerging markets.

AbstractThis article analyzes the impact of capital structure and bank liquidity on the performance of commercial banks in Vietnam, a transition market in Asia. This research is unique because it is the first study to employ the Bayesian Estimation methods in banking studies. The data includes 463 annual bank-year observations from 37 commercial banks in Vietnam from 2003 to 2020. The Bayesian linear regressions indicate that a higher leverage ratio reduces ROA and ROE while positively empowering EPS. Our findings also document the positive impacts of bank funding liquidity on the performance of commercial banks in Vietnam. Our results are also robust even when employing the Generalized Least Squares estimations. While our results are consistent with the Pecking Order Theory and and prior literature, they do not align with the trade-off theory. Finally, our study contributes implications for policymakers and bank managers to develop the banking system sustainably.

This study analyzes the impacts of ownership structure and business diversifications on the risk-taking behaviors of insurance companies in Vietnam. Foreign ownership and institutional ownership in the insurance sector are increasing significantly due to the privatization trend in Vietnam. Besides, business diversification allows insurance firms to maximize profits and reduce insolvency. Therefore, this study enriches the current literature because it is the first to examine how ownership and diversifications affect the risk-taking behaviors of insurance companies in Vietnam. We employ the Ordinary Least Squares, Fixed Effect Models, Random Effect Models, Generalized Least Squares, and dynamic system Generalized Methods of Moments to analyze 42 insurance companies from 2005 to 2020. Our findings indicate that business diversification increases the risk-taking behaviors of insurance firms. We also figure out a U-shaped relationship between institutional ownership and risk-taking behavior, with a turning point of 9.8%. This study also indicates an inverse U-shaped relationship between foreign ownership and insurers’ risk-taking behaviors, with a turning point of 20%. Thirdly, the interaction terms between ownership and diversification suggest the moderate role of business diversification in increasing the risk of insurance firms. Our findings align with agency theory, stakeholder theory, monitoring hypothesis, expropriation hypothesis, and prior literature. This study contributes practical implications for managers and policymakers to develop the insurance sector sustainably.

Using behavioral factors (mood, overconfidence, underreaction, overreaction, and herding behavior) as proxy variables in the Vietnamese stock market, this article tries to explore the link between investor demographics (gender, age, experience, and educational ability) and their investment decisions. This study compiles information from a structured questionnaire survey of 400 local, international, institutional, and individual investors in Vietnam. It employed partial multiple regression to examine how investors' demographic variables affected their investment choices using behavioral traits as mediator variables. According to the results, investor emotion, overconfidence, over/underreaction, and herd behavior all have a large impact on investing decisions. Additionally, investors' investing selections are significantly and favorably influenced by their age, gender, and degree of education. Although experience does not have a significant effect on financial decisions, investors start to ignore emotional aspects as they become more experienced.

This study examines the impacts of investor sentiment and liquidity on the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) anomaly returns in Vietnam before and during the COVID-19. We construct an internet search-based measure of sentiment (FEARS) from the Google Trends Search Volume Index of Vietnam’s financial and economic search terms from December 2010 to December 2020. We employ Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regressions and univariate portfolio testing to examine the existence of IVOL anomaly in Vietnam after controlling for FEARS sentiment index and liquidity proxies. Our findings document the persistence of the IVOL anomaly in the Vietnam stock market before the pandemic. However, the IVOL anomaly disappears during the pandemic. In addition, increasing investor fear sentiment reduces stock returns during the pandemic. Our robustness tests indicate that the IVOL anomaly persists in the high FEARS, low FEARS, and high turnover subsample before the pandemic. Our results contribute new evidence of how the FEARS index and liquidity help explain the IVOL puzzle before and during the pandemic. Our findings align with the trade-off theory, the efficient market theory, the attention-driven theory, and prior literature.

The energy sector in Vietnam has developed rapidly as the country is transitioning to renewable energy. Moreover, the Vietnamese government also motivates the engagement of private investors in the energy sector to enhance the competitiveness of the energy market. Therefore, this paper investigates how innovation investments and ownership concentration affect the financial sustainability of energy companies in Vietnam. We employ the Fixed Effect Model and Generalized Method of Moments estimations to analyze the sample, including 600 firm-year observations of 103 energy companies from January 2007 to December 2020. The empirical findings show that innovations and block-holders support firms to grow sustainably. The positive relationship between innovation investments and financial sustainability is robust even when we employ alternative proxies of innovation investments. Our study indicates that block-ownership affects sustainable developments of smaller energy firms, while innovation investments significantly improve the sustainability of larger energy firms. Finally, our study reports that the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affects the financial sustainability of energy firms. Our findings align with agency theory, resource-based theory, and prior literature. Our findings recommend that energy firms motivate innovation investments such as training and R&D activities to grow sustainably. In addition, the Vietnamese government should encourage small energy firms to attract blockholders to improve financial sustainability.

Numerical simulations are performed to determine the angular dependence of the MIe scattering cross-section intensities of pure water droplets and pollutants such as contaminated water droplets and black carbon as a function of the wavelength of the incident laser light, complex refractive index, and size of the scatterer. Our results show distinct scattering features when varying the various scattering parameters, thereby allowing the identification of the scattering particle with specific application to the identification of atmospheric pollutants including black carbon. Regardless of the type of scatterer, the scattering intensity is nearly uniform with a slight preference for forward scattering when the size of the particle is within 20% of the incident laser’s wavelength. The scattering patterns start to exhibit distinguishable features when the size parameter equals 1.77, corresponding to an incident laser wavelength of 0.355 μm and a particle radius of 0.1 μm. The patterns then become increasingly unique as the size parameter increases. Based on these calculations, we propose a time-gated lidar scheme consisting of multiple detectors that can rotate through a telescopic angle and be placed equidistantly around the scattering particles to collect the backscattered light and a commercially available Q-switched laser system emitting at tunable laser wavelengths. By using a pulsed laser with 10-ns pulse duration, our scheme could distinguish scattering centers that are at least 3 m apart. Our scheme called MIe Scattering Time-gated multi-Static LIDAR (MISTS–LIDAR) would be capable of identifying the type of atmospheric pollutant and mapping its location with a spatial resolution of a few meters.

Fluoride host materials doped with trivalent cerium ions have previously been demonstrated as successful laser materials in the ultraviolet wavelength region. However, the nonlinear optical properties of the fluoride hosts in this wavelength region have not been investigated yet, although nonlinearity could result in undesirable effects such as self-focusing and pulse distortion when these fluoride materials are used as gain media in high-power, ultrashort pulse laser oscillator and amplifier systems. In this work, the nonlinear refractive index of lithium calcium aluminum fluoride (LiCaAlF6), lithium strontium aluminum fluoride (LiSrAlF6), lanthanum fluoride (LaF3), and yttrium lithium fluoride (YLiF4) fluoride host materials are determined using the Kramers–Krönig relation model in the ultraviolet wavelength region. Self-focusing conditions, particularly at the peak laser emission wavelength of these materials, are further analyzed. Results show that LiCaAlF6 has the smallest nonlinear refractive index and self-focusing, making it an ideal host material under the conditions of ultrashort pulse and ultrahigh-power laser generation.

The development of the underground economy can significantly affect a country's economic indicators. Although there have been different studies on this phenomenon, many aspects of underground activities remain incompletely defined. Therefore, the current research aims to supplement the existing literature by analyzing the link between abundant natural resources and the scope of the underground economy. To accomplish this objective, we collected panel data from ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries during the period 1991-2018. We then employed the Bayesian regression estimator to look into the influence of natural resources wealth on the scope of the underground sector. We found that the former can negatively and strongly affect the latter in ASEAN countries. That is, natural resources might be a blessing rather than a curse for economic growth and development in these countries. Other variables were found to have a strong positive relationship with the underground economy, like trade openness, tax burden, size of government, corruption, and the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, GDP growth, urbanization, and political stability had a strong negative effect on the size of the underground economy. These findings provide some implications for the governments of ASEAN countries to perform appropriate measures to control the underground economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse the role of FDI and institutional quality in local economic growth in Vietnam. Using a dataset of 63 provinces in Vietnam between 2005 and 2020, the result of the Bayesian linear regression (BLR) method shows that FDI has a negative effect on economic growth, while provinces have a negative effect on economic growth. High institutional quality (IQ) leads to high economic growth. Besides, the result of the article also shows that the interaction between FDI flows, and institutional quality (FDIxIQ variable) positively impacts the economic growth of provinces in Vietnam. This implies that localities with good institutional quality will absorb FDI better. These findings suggest that policymakers should pay more attention to policies to attract FDI and improve institutional quality to promote sustainable GDP growth in the localities of Vietnam, thereby promoting the overall economic growth of Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article investigates the impact of bank-specific and macroeconomic factors on the net interest margin (NIM) of commercial banks in Vietnam. In order to explore the association, we performed Bayesian linear regression on a dataset of 24 banks from 2008 to 2020. Our research result reveals that bank size (LNSIZE), profitability (ROA), operational cost to operating income ratio (BOPO), loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR), and non-performing loan ratio (NPL) of a bank positively affect the NIM of banks. On the contrary, bank liquidity (GWM) and loan market power (MPR) negatively affect the NIM of banks. Moreover, we suggest that macroeconomic factors, including GDP growth (GDP) and M2 money supply growth (M2), have a negative impact on NIM. Furthermore, the impact of the inflation rate (INFL) on NIM is relatively low. Our article highlights new information that improves the understanding of the NIM of banks in emerging economies like Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human resources development is one of the main issues in the socio-economic development strategy and the transform of any region in the context of Industry 4.0. However, Vietnamese human resources have been poorly evaluated in the areas of quality, lack of dynamism, and creativity. Therefore, this paper presents a fuzzy logic approach to ranking seven skills shortage in Vietnam's Labor Market, namely lifelong learning, adaptive capacity, information technology capacity, creativity and innovation capacity, problem-solving capacity, foreign language competency, and organizing and managing competency. The results showed that the problem-solving skill has the largest gap between an enterprise's requirements and the actual response of employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]