a b s t r a c t JEL classification: J61 O15 R23 Keywords: Labor Migration Inequality VietnamVietnam's economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces, yet poverty has diminished across the entire country. With capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector, geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth. Conversely, rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration. We first use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants. We then examine the role of migration as an influence on income ratios between pairs of provinces. The former analysis robustly confirms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty-related labor immobility at the provincial level. Examination of income ratios between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive. A robust inequality-reducing impact of migration is found for migration flows into provinces where most of Vietnam's trade-oriented industrial investments are located.

Shock therapy" transitions in Eastern Europe facilitated movement of skilled workers into privatized industries offering high wage premia relative to state industries. Other transitional economies (notably China and Vietnam) have been slower to relinquish control over key industries and factor markets. Some costs of this piecemeal approach are now becoming apparent. We examine the spillover of continuing capital market distortions into the market for a complementary factor, skilled labor. Using Vietnamese data we find that capital market segmentation creates a two-track market for skills, in which state sector workers earn high salaries while non-state workers face lower demand and lower compensation. Growth is reduced directly by diminished allocative efficiency and incentives to acquire education, and indirectly by higher wage inequality and rents for workers with access to state jobs.

Vietnam's economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces, yet poverty has diminished across the entire country. With capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector, geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth. Conversely, rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration. We rst use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants. We then examine the role of migration as an inuence on cross-province income dierentials. The former analysis robustly conrms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty-related labor immobility at the provincial level. Examination of income dierentials between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive. A robust inequality-reducing impact of migration is found for migration ows into provinces where most of Vietnam's trade-oriented industrial investments are located.

The new economics of labor migration (NELM) frequently emphasizes the importance of migration as a way for rural households to overcome credit constraints. If this hypothesis is correct, then the credit constraint is a motivation for migration (a relaxation of this constraint would encourage less migration). Conventionally, it is believed that migration is costly and has to be financed with borrowed capital, so the credit constraint is a deterrent of migration (a relaxation of this constraint would encourage more migration). In this paper, an agricultural household model is developed to study whether the credit constraint is a motivation for or a deterrent to migration. The model's result confirms the NELM's hypothesis: for households with high demand for agricultural investments and high net migration return, migration is used as a way to finance capital investments. Using data from four provinces in Vietnam, preliminary evidence is found supporting this hypothesis.

A persistent public-private sector difference in returns to skills is one sign that Vietnam's transition from command to market economy remains incomplete. Matching this is large gap in postcompulsory education enrollments favoring children from families with members employed by government or state enterprises. We compare that gap between 2004 and 2014, a decade during which Vietnam experienced a boom in private-sector and foreign-invested economic activity. Despite the boom, we find a persistent and widening enrollment gap between "state" and "nonstate" households which are similar in other observable respects. This institutional gap is not the only basis for enrollment differences-the ethnicity gap has also widened, even as rural-urban disparities have diminished-but they may contribute to slow and unequal progress in overall educational attainment. Unless addressed, enrollment gaps are likely to worsen intergenerational inequality and may reduce long-run economic growth.