Using data from nationwide surveys of provincial institutions and private manufacturing small medium enterprises, this study provided the first evidence of the impact of provincial institution quality and firms' participation in and intensity of corrupt activities on firm productivity in Vietnam. We found that the bribe intensity instead of whether firms bribed state officials or not (measured by a dummy variable) has a negative effect on firm productivity when the endogeneity of corruption and unobservable characteristics are controlled for. This finding contrasts to a popular belief about a paradox for East Asian countries where corruption is positively associated with firm growth.

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This study provides for the new evidence of factors determining export participation of private manufacturing SMEs in Vietnam. Using a recent national survey in 2011 about private manufacturing SMEs, we find that while more years in business does not affect the probability of firm exporting, firm with smaller scale have a lower likelihood of exporting. The results also indicate that innovation has a positive effect on exporting probability of firms implying that encouragement of innovative activities play an important role in promoting exporting participation of private domestic SMEs.

In recent years, solid waste pollution has been a burden on sustainable development in Vietnam. The suburban districts in major cities, in particular, have all witnessed a high rate of urbanization and a rapidly increasing amount of solid waste. Focusing on the case of unsustainably managed solid waste in Hoai Duc district (2016-2020), five research hypotheses, including factors affecting the increase of solid waste in Hoai Duc, are proposed, i.e.: Industrialization (based on the change of agricultural land area), population growth, urbanization (manifested by changes in urban land area), socio-economic policies, and educational qualification and public awareness of residents as well. It can be seen that population growth is just an indirect contributor to the situation, meanwhile, the sole cause of large daily plastic waste is none other than the burgeoning population attracted by urbanization. Therefore, the majority of attention and resources should be placed on strengthening policies that can keep urbanization under control, to ensure sustainable environmental development in addition to economic development.