Adoption of ISO9001 through supply chain in Vietnam : impacts of FDI and product-related environmental regulation

The objective of the present study is to examine the determinants of ISO 9001 certification, focusing on the effect of Product-related Environmental Regulations on Chemicals (PRERCs) and FDI using the answers to several questions in our Vietnam survey conducted from December 2011 to January 2012. Our findings suggest that PRERCs may help with the improvement in quality control of Vietnamese firms. If Vietnamese manufacturing firms with ISO 9001 certification are more likely to adopt ISO 14001, as well as firms in developed countries, our results indicate that the European chemical regulations may assist in the reduction of various environmental impacts in Vietnam. In addition, we found that FDI promotes the adoption of ISO 9001. If FDI firms in Vietnam certify ISO 14001 after the adoption of ISO 9001, as in the case of Malaysia and the developed economies, FDI firms may also be able to improve environmental performance as a result of ISO 14001.

Effects of RoHs and REACH regulations on firm-level production and export, and the role of global value chains : the cases of Malaysia and Vietnam

This paper uses firm-level data to examine the impact of foreign chemical safety regulations such as RoHS and REACH on the production costs and export performance of firms in Malaysia and Vietnam. This paper also investigates the role of global value chains in enhancing the likelihood that a firm complies with RoHS and REACH. We find that in addition to the initial setup costs for compliance, EU RoHS (REACH) implementation imposes on firms additional variable production costs by requiring additional labor and capital expenditures of around 57% (73%) of variable costs. We also find that compliance with RoHS and REACH significantly increases the probability of export and that compliance with EU RoHS and REACH helps firms enter a greater variety of countries. Furthermore, firms participating in global value chains have higher compliance with RoHS and REACH regulations, regardless of whether the firm is directly exporting, when the firm operates in upstream or downstream industries of the countries' supply chain.

Food quality awareness : cases from shrimp producers in Thailand and vegetable producers in Vietnam

The high number of import rejections of food commodities suggests that producers in exporting countries are not complying with established standards. To understand why this is the case, we explore the behavior of producers and consumers in developing countries. First, we examine the successful transformation of production practices adopted by shrimp producers in Thailand. In support of the dramatic change in practices, we observe an important role played by the public sector in providing a means to visualize chemical residues and to control processes upstream of the supply chain via a registration system and a traceability system called Movement Document. Furthermore, very active information sharing by the private sector contributes to the dissemination of useful technical and market information among producers. We also examine the knowledge and perceptions of consumers with respect to food safety in Vietnam. We find that consumers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City behave differently toward the third-party certification VietGAP, probably owing to differences in the history of market mechanisms between the two cities.

Spatial patterns of manufacturing clusters in Vietnam

The formation of industrial clusters is critical for sustained economic growth. We identify the manufacturing clusters in Vietnam, using the Mori and Smith (2013) method, which indicates the spatial pattern of industrial agglomerations using the global extent (GE) and local density (LD) indices. Spatial pattern identification is extremely helpful because industrial clusters are often spread over a wide geographical area and the GE and LD indices—along with cluster mapping—display how the respective clusters fit into specific spatial patterns.