This special issue, namely, “From economic theory to economic policy: Contributions of Ngo Van Long”, is an honor of the late Professor Long’s immense contributions to economic theory. The contributors to this issue include a select group of his friends, colleagues, co-authors, former graduate students and mentees from around the world.
Professor Ngo Van Long is a James McGill Professor at McGill University (Canada). Professor Long was a prolific and influential general equilibrium economic theorist of the Samuelsonian tradition. He also contributed to other areas of economics, including but not limited to natural resources and environmental economics; international trade; theory of dynamic games and dynamic optimization; and applied microeconomic theory, particularly industrial organization theory and public economics. His contribution to academia is tremendous. He published at least eight books (not counting one under preparation at the time of his passing), 65 book chapters, and close to 200 journal articles, with an h-index of 52.
The collection of papers in this volume touches on topics and themes on which Professor Long has made a lasting impact. The first two papers are in the areas of environmental and resource economics. The article “Public services, environmental quality and subjective well-being in a European city: The case of Strasbourg metropolitan area” investigates determinants of life satisfaction. The article “The economics of emissions in rice production: a survey-data-driven approach in Vietnam” calculates the greenhouse gas emissions from rice production, then provides policy implications to reduce this emission, including carbon tax.
This issue also discusses the area of international trade and its relationship to productivity and growth. The article “Symmetry-breaking and trade in neoclassical economies with domestic policies having diminishing effect to production scale” answers the question whether Nash whether a Nash equilibrium of a two-country trading economy is symmetry-breaking. The article “Total factor productivity and outsourcing: the case of Vietnamese small and medium sized enterprises” discusses the impact of outsourcing on total factor productivity, focusing on Vietnamese small and medium sized enterprises. The article “Standards compliance, participation in the global value chain and the value-added of labour: evidence from Vietnam’s small-and-medium-sized enterprises” digs into standards compliance and the potential to participate in the global value chain.
The next two papers remember Professor Ngo Van Long’s expertise in dynamic optimization and dynamic games. The article “Comparing the Harrod-Domar, Solow and Ramsey growth models and their implications for economic policies” introduces three growth models, i.e., Harold-Domar, Solow, and Ramsey, then compares and contrasts these three models under different assumptions in public spending, debt, and COVID-19 shock. The article “Optimal coalition splitting with heterogenous strategies” proposes the optimal strategy for members in a coalition when a member decides to split, highlighting the implications for long-term pollution levels and the duration of coalitions.
Celebrating Professor Long’s many contributions to applied microeconomics, the article “Cigarette tax pass-through in Vietnam: evidence from retailers’ data” explores the pass-through rate of the increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in Vietnam, and proposes some incentives to improve tobacco tax policy. The article “Capital diversion in Vietnamese state-owned enterprises” analyzes the capital diversion of Vietnamese state-owned enterprises.
The last two papers remember Professor Ngo Van Long’s work, which incorporated the concepts of duty and morality into economic models, particularly his introduction of the Kant-Nash equilibrium in different contexts. The article “Adult and child labor markets with Nashian and Kantian firms” discusses how firms with different behaviors affect the labor demand and child labor participation in the market. The article “Kantian–Nashian interaction and petty tax corruption in developing countries” shows the Kantian – Nashian interaction between tax auditors and taxpayers in various scenarios to study corruption in developing countries.
This special issue appreciates the support from the guest editors, namely Professor Binh Tran-Nam (UNSW, Australia and DEPOCEN, Vietnam), Professor Cuong Le-Van (Paris School of Economics and CNRS, France), Professor Van Pham-Hoang (Baylor University, USA), and Dr. Thai-Ha Le (VinFuture Foundation, Vietnam and IPAG Business School, France).
- Access to Volume 3, Issue 2
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