Transformation Of Vietnams Upland Farming Societies Under Market Reform

This book is a case study of Vietnam's efforts to fight poverty using market-oriented land reforms. In the 1980s and 1990s, the country undertook major institutional reforms, and an impressive reduction in poverty followed. But what role did the reforms play? Did the efficiency gains from reform come at a cost to equity? Were there both winners and losers? Was rising rural landlessness in the wake of reforms a sign of success or failure? 'Land in Transition' investigates the impacts on living standards of the two stages of land law reform: in 1988, when land was allocated to households administratively and output markets were liberalized; and in 1993, when official land titles were introduced and land transactions were permitted for the first time since communist rule began. To fully assess the poverty impacts of these changes, the authors' analysis of household surveys is guided by both economic theory and knowledge of the historical and social contexts. The book delineates lessons from Vietnam's experience and their implications for current policy debates in China and elsewhere.

Abstract: While liberalizing key factor markets is a crucial step in the transition from a socialist control-economy to a market economy, the process can be stalled by imperfect information, high transaction costs, and covert resistance from entrenched interests. Ravallion and van de Walle study land-market adjustment in the wake of Vietnam's reforms aiming to establish a free market in land-use rights following de-collectivization. Inefficiencies in the initial administrative allocation are measured against an explicit counterfactual market solution. The authors' tests using a farm-household panel data set spanning the reforms suggest that land allocation responded positively but slowly to the inefficiencies of the administrative allocation. They find no sign that the transition favored the land rich or that it was thwarted by the continuing power over land held by local officials. This paper"a joint product of the Poverty Team and the Public Services Team, Development Research Group"is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the welfare impacts of major policy reforms.

These chapters reflect the striking differences between transition countries in their processes of rural reform and development of rural poverty.

The Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia is the first comprehensive and critical overview of the ethnographic and anthropological work in Highland Asia over the past half a century. Opening up a grand new space for critical engagement, the handbook presents Highland Asia as a world-region that cuts across the traditional divides inherited from colonial and Cold War area divisions - the Indian Subcontinent/South Asia, Southeast Asia, China/East Asia, and Central Asia. Thirty-two chapters assess the history of research, identify ethnographic trends, and evaluate a range of analytical themes that developed in particular settings of Highland Asia. They cover varied landscapes and communities, from Kyrgyzstan to India, from Bhutan to Vietnam and bring local voices and narratives relating trade and tribute, ritual and resistance, pilgrimage and prophecy, modernity and marginalization, capital and cosmos to the fore. The handbook shows that for millennia, Highland Asians have connected far-flung regions through movements of peoples, goods and ideas, and at all times have been the enactors, repositories, and mediators of world-historical processes. Taken together, the contributors and chapters subvert dominant lowland narratives by privileging primarily highland vantages that reveal Highland Asia as an ecumune and prism that refracts and generates global history, social theory, and human imagination. In the currently unfolding Asian Century, this compels us to reorient and re-envision Highland Asia, in ethnography, in theory, and in the connections between this world-region, made of hills, highlands and mountains, and a planetary context. The handbook reveals both regional commonalities and diversities, generalities and specificities, and a broad orientation to key themes in the region. An indispensable reference work, this handbook fills a significant gap in the literature and will be of interest to academics, researchers and students interested in Highland Asia, Zomia Studies, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, Conceptual History and Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Central Asian Studies and South Asian Studies as well as Asian Studies in general.

While liberalizing key factor markets is a crucial step in the transition from a socialist control-economy to a market economy, the process can be stalled by imperfect information, high transaction costs, and covert resistance from entrenched interests. Ravallion and van de Walle study land-market adjustment in the wake of Vietnam's reforms aiming to establish a free market in land-use rights following de-collectivization. Inefficiencies in the initial administrative allocation are measured against an explicit counterfactual market solution. The authors' tests using a farm-household panel data set spanning the reforms suggest that land allocation responded positively but slowly to the inefficiencies of the administrative allocation. They find no sign that the transition favored the land rich or that it was thwarted by the continuing power over land held by local officials.This paper - a joint product of the Poverty Team and the Public Services Team, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the welfare impacts of major policy reforms.

During Vietnam's thirty years of economic growth since 1986, government policies have been central in raising rice production and export. However, the relevance of the 'rice first' policy and the place of smallholder agriculture have recently been questioned in the discussion on Vietnam's agricultural development strategy. The objective of this thesis is to contribute to designing appropriate agricultural development strategies for Vietnam, based on empirical analysis at the farm household level. The thesis begins by reviewing theories and literature on the agricultural transformation. This review assists in the development of the analytical framework and research issues for the thesis. The next chapter provides an overview of agricultural reforms and structural transformation in Vietnam since 1986. The core of the thesis is contained in the next three chapters. Chapter 4 examines the merit of crop diversification in rural Vietnam. Chapter 5 investigates the effect of nonfarm participation on household production choices. Chapter 6 studies the effect that land reforms directed towards land consolidation have on labour allocation and promoting the economic diversity of farm households. The final chapter discusses policy implications. The findings indicate that economies of scale are evident in Vietnam's multiple crop production. Output complementarity is found to exist between rice and other annual crops. Also, substantial technical inefficiency exists in diversified farms. Enhancing education, particularly for women, and further land reforms are the main technical efficiency shifters. Results also show that in a multiple crop environment, households with smallholder production respond to cost stress by lowering family labour use. In addition, in the short run, labour movement into non-farm activities reduces rice production in the north of Vietnam. In contrast, in the south, labour participation in nonfarm activities has induced rice farmers to maintain rice production by hiring more labour during periods of peak labour demand, and by investing in more capital to facilitate less labour-intensive farming. While agriculture in the north is losing its comparative advantage, the stability of rice production at the national level is welcome news for policy makers in that it suggests that food production can be maintained, despite the rapid structural change in rural areas. Finally, land reforms that lead to less labour-intensive farming, along with the development of credit and insurance markets in rural areas, are important in raising agricultural productivity and the promotion of economic structural transformation. In general, in light of increasing rural wages and structural change, Vietnam's agricultural transformation replicates the early East Asian experience, characterised by the dominance of smallholder agriculture. There has so far been no definitive policy resolution of the optimal structure of Vietnam's smallholder agriculture. The balance between efficiency and equity, between lowering production costs and raising prices, is a challenge for policy makers. The findings suggest policies for maintaining the comparative advantage of agriculture. The government should relax the 'rice first' policy to improve household welfare. In addition, land reforms responding to less labour-intensive farming, and the development of the nonfarm economy, should play a central role in restructuring smallholder agriculture.

A collection of essays written on twentieth-century Vietnamese society, Vit Nam Expos is one of only a handful of books written by French scholars for an English-speaking audience. The volume is multidisciplinary and represents a new trend in Vietnamese studies that addresses issues beyond politics, wars, and violence, exploring the complexity of more subtle power relationships in Vietnamese society. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, "Vietnamese Society in the Early Twentieth Century," takes a micro approach to the study of Vietnamese society on the eve of the irreversible social transformation that occurred as the colonial infrastructure took root in Indochina. Part II, "Vietnamese Intellectuals: Contesting Colonial Power," contains biographical accounts of Vietnamese intellectuals who tried to reform their society under colonial domination. Part III, "Post-Colonial Vietnam: From Welfare State to Market-Oriented Economy," traces Vietnam's search for a viable economic model while maintaining itself as a socialist state. The book speaks to diverse themes, including the nature of village life, the development of health care during the colonial era, the status of women, the role of Vietnamese intellectuals in the anticolonial struggle, the building of a socialist state, contemporary rural migration, labor relations, and Vietnam in an age of globalization. Gisele Bousquet is Research Associate at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Pierre Brocheux is Matre de Conference of History, Universit Denis Diderot-Paris VII.