Late industrializing countries can only achieve industrialization - a necessary development path to create an advanced economy - by upgrading manufacturing
competitiveness. This process is particularly important in a rapidly globalizing world,
which generates greater opportunities and challenges. Vietnam is a late industrializing
economy but, despite rapid growth, the scale of Vietnamese manufacturing is still small,
and productivity is relatively low. The objectives of this thesis therefore are:
• to measure manufacturing competitiveness in Vietnam and to analyse its
determinants;
• to extend that analysis in a comparison with the ASEAN-4; and
• to assess the effect of various policy measures on Vietnam's manufacturing
competitiveness.
To pursue these objectives, both comparative and regression analyses are undertaken
based on a large dataset.