This study assesses the impact(s) of monetary policy and further influence of competitiveness on bank risk-taking of the Vietnamese commercial banks over the period of 2007-2016, an unstable period of the domestic monetary policy. The monetary policy is captured by a set of different variables including money supply, refinancing interest rate and treasury bill interest rate. Using the GMM methodology, the study finds that the monetary policy of Vietnam has a significant impact on bank risk-taking level, as measured by Z-score index. The empirical findings also indicate that bank risk-taking increases in the context of a loose monetary policy. In addition, the competitiveness of banks, presented by the Lerner index, is found as a determinant of bank risk-taking levels. By using interacting variables, the findings indicate that the impact of the competitiveness of banks outweighs that of monetary policy on bank risk-taking behaviour. It implies that the banks with high market power demonstrate less risk-taking behaviour even in a loose monetary policy environment. Besides that, liquidity, credit level and cost inefficiency could increase risktaking behaviour of banks while bank size poses restrictions on bank risk-taking.

This paper investigates the relationship between tax avoidance behavior and state-ownership level at corporates in Vietnam to find out whether state-ownership influence the tax avoidance behavior of Vietnamese firms. Effective tax rate presents for the tax avoidance level, in which higher effective tax rate means the lower tax avoidance level. In this research, the authors check robustness by using different methods to calculate the level of tax avoidance of corporates. Using Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) method with data of 460 enterprises listed on Vietnam Stock Exchange market from 2009 to 2015, the empirical result shows that the level of state ownership has an inverse relationship with tax avoidance behavior of corporates. In other words, the higher level of state-owned is, the fewer taxes they avoid. Empirical evidence also confirms that low concentration (≤ 30%) of state ownership has a positive effect on tax avoidance behavior. Besides that, size, firm performance, tangible assets level, and debt ratio have a meaningful positive relationship with the degree of tax avoidance, similarly prior studies. Contribution/ OriginalityThis study provides empirical evidence for prior theory on the relationship between corporate ownership and the manager' behavior. The study results again confirmed that there is a conflict of benefits between business executives and shareholders, by measuring the tax avoidance level of state-owned enterprises in Vietnam.

This study investigates the effects of public debt and budget deficits on the sustainable economic development of developing countries, taking into account the role of control of corruption. The two-step GMM method was applied for unbalanced panel data of 59 developing countries from 2004 to 2015. The study found that public debt and the budget deficit had negative effects on sustainable development, while the effect of control of corruption was positive. Moreover, using interaction terms between control of corruption and public debt and budget deficit, respectively, empirical results showed that controlling corruption limited these adverse effects. Thus, if the objective is to achieve sustainable economic development, developing countries should not see raising public debt or maintaining budget deficits as a strategy for economic development. The study contributes empirical evidence to the theory of debt overhang, crowded effects, and institutional theory in the context of developing countries. The implications are also discussed in this paper.

Research aims: This study focuses on the correlation between income diversification and financial performance, taking into account banks’ size and type of ownership as well as financial crisis.Design/Methodology/Approach: This study uses financial data of 29 commercial banks in Vietnam during the period from 2005 to 2018. This research employs an Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) regression.Research findings: The results do not find a statistical evidence of a direct effect of banks’ income diversification on their financial performance. However, when considering the classification factors such as bank’s size and type of ownership, the findings show that big-scale and state-owned banks can take advantages of diversification strategies to boost their profitability. Moreover, the study proves that income diversification generates the significantly positive effect on banks’ financial performance during the time of financial crisis.Theoretical contribution/ Originality: Theoretical contribution in order to provide evidence on the direct effect of income diversification on bank’s financial performance in relation with  banks’ size and type of ownership as well as financial crisis.Practitioner/Policy implication:  Further, this research also contributes on managerial contribution for the bank’s manager, policy-makers and investors to get sight of good banks’ financial performance in the context of unstable economy.Research limitation/Implication: The limitations still exist in this research, such as: (1) the number of banks participating in the research sample is a predictable limitation; (2) this research mainly focused on financial variables but ignores the variables representing the manager’s behaviour and the bank’s organization structure; (3) the future studies can focus on these aspects to further explore the hidden picture of diversification strategy and banking performance.