Despite a sizable population and modest status as a low middle-income country, Vietnam has recorded a low COVID-19 fatality rate that rivals those of richer countries with far larger spending on health. We offer an early review of the emerging literatures in public health and economics on the...

While female labor force participation (LFP) in Iran is among the lowest in the world, there is hardly any study on the COVID-19 pandemic effects on the country's female LFP. We find that female LFP decreased during the pandemic years by around 1 percentage point in 2021 and 2022. When...

Vietnam is widely regarded as a success story for its impressive economic growth and poverty reduction in the last few decades. Yet, recent evidence indicates that the country's economic growth has not been uniform. Compiling and analyzing new extensive province-level data from the Vietnam...

Does the COVID-19 pandemic cause people unhappy? In this study, we use a recent survey from China, Japan, South Korea, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States to explore this question. We find a relatively large effect: a one per-mille point increase in the incidence of the COVID-19...

In this study, we examine characteristics of employment in FDI in Vietnam. Workers from FDI account for 5.6% of working people. Female and younger people are more likely to work the FDI sector. Compared with private and public sectors, the FDI sector has a lower share of workers who have...

In this study, we examine the impact of minimum wages in Vietnam using individual-level data from the 2012-2020 annual Labor Force Surveys. During this period, the average real minimum wage increased by around 4% per year. Overall, we do not find significant effects from minimum wages on...