Investigating the competitiveness of Vietnam's agricultural sector: a multi-level approach

Abstract

The systematic literature review indicates that competitiveness is a key pillar in economic theory and an important concept in empirical and practical studies. The concept may be defined in many ways with various perspectives and measured by several frameworks. The comprehensive literature review confirms that there is a significant research gap in investigating the competitiveness of Vietnam’s agricultural sector by a multi-level approach and comparing the consistency or difference between various approaches of measuring agricultural competitiveness. The dissertation, in general, has four research objectives such as first assessing the static and dynamic agricultural competitiveness of Vietnam; second, investigating and compare the agricultural trade patterns Vietnam in comparison to the ASEAN countries; third, evaluate the agricultural comparative advantages of the alternative agricultural production systems of rice, coconut, and pomelo in the same agroecological conditions through the case study in Ben Tre province, Mekong Delta; and fourth, empirically analyzing the consistency and theoretically comparing the differences and meanings of the competitiveness trade indices and economic indicators.