This paper explores the impact of urbanization on income inequality in Vietnam, using the regression estimation method with panel data including Driscoll and Kraay, and Pooled Mean Group. The research data cover 63 provinces in Vietnam from 2006 to 2016. The results show that in the long term, urbanization has an impact on reducing income inequality. In the short term, urbanization has a negligible impact on income inequality. The hypothesis of an inverted-U-shaped relationship between urbanization and income inequality is confirmed. The high school enrollment rate and the proportion of agriculture have an effect on reducing income inequality.

Our study illuminates the impact of international trade on environmental quality in lower-middle-income countries by using CO2 emission as the proxy for environmental degradation. Using the Pooled Mean Group estimation along with validity tests, the results show that in the long run, CO2 emission is affected by merchandise export, merchandise import, FDI, GDP per capita, and renewable energy consumption. The impact of trade on CO2 emission is mixed because our findings show that merchandise export and import have opposite effects. In addition, our results reveal that Environmental Kuznets Curve exists in the long run with N-sharped. The increase in GDP per capita leads to the raise of CO2 emission at first, but later comes the decrease and then increase. The paper has relevant implications for law makers.

Poverty is a global socio-economic phenomenon. It is always a problem in all countries include developing countries and developed countries. In Vietnam, the poverty rate has been decreasing while the urbanization has happened rapidly over the past 20 years. Handling the dual problems of urbanization and poverty is important to be able to attain sustainable development. Therefore, this study is to analyze the impact of urbanization on poverty reduction in Vietnam. Using Driscoll and Kraay's method and D-GMM method to estimate the provinces' panel data in the period 2006-2016, we confirm that there exists a U-shape relationship between the level of urbanization and the poverty level in Vietnam. Moreover, the estimated thresholds of urbanization from the perspective of poverty reduction are 40.19% and 43.68% in the static and dynamic model, respectively. In addition, our results exhibit that the gross regional domestic product, human capital, and agricultural value have the effect of reducing poverty, but government spending and export value increases the poverty rate in Vietnam. The paper has relevant implications for policymakers.