The paper examines the relationship between the economic integration and growth nexus in Vietnam using powerful quantitative methods, specifically the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and the Granger causality test. The study focuses on three types of economic integration, including overall integration, financial integration and trade integration, which affected economic growth in Vietnam from 1986 to 2015. The key finding from this study is that when three types of economic integration are considered together, integration provides positive impacts on economic growth. In addition, causal relationship exists between overall integration and financial integration, and between trade integration and financial integration. As such, financial integration is absolutely important to economic growth in Vietnam. On the grounds of these findings, the Vietnamese government should carefully outline socio-economic development strategies to maintain political stability and to derive benefits from economic integration and globalization.

The importance of non-renewable, renewable and sustainable energy sources and energy consumption in the economic development strategy of a country is undeniable. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the impacts of energy consumption on the economic growth of Vietnam during the 1980-2014 period. By applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model of Pesaran et al. (2001), and the Granger causality test of Toda and Yamamoto (1995), the empirical results provide evidence that electricity consumption has positive impacts on Vietnam's economic growth in both the short run and long run. For public policy prescriptions, the empirical evidence suggests that an exploration of new sources of renewable and sustainable energy is essential for long run economic development.