Effects of foreign direct investment and human capital on labour productivity: evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has positive effect on the labour productivity in Vietnam. Labour productivity is the elemental determinant of a country’s development level in long-term. In recent years, although increasing consistently, labour productivity of Vietnam remains low in comparison to other South East Asian countries. To identify the direction of effect and the level of effect of FDI and human capital on the labour productivity of Vietnam, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to examine the effect of FDI and human capital on labour productivity in Vietnam from 1986 to 2014. The results of bounds test confirm the existence of cointegration among the variables. Further, the Toda and Yamamoto Granger causality test affirms that there is unidirectional causality running from foreign direct investment and human capital index to labour productivity. The empirical results provide strong statistical evidence that foreign direct investment and human capital has a positive impact on labour productivity in Vietnam in long-term. These findings imply that workers are expected to further improve their knowledge, skills and that policy-maker should establish concrete plans to increase human capital. Results from this study provide suggestion necessary for Vietnam to achieve sustainable development.