In the past two decades, ASEAN countries have witnessed a rapid rise in air pollution, and environmental degradation has become a severe problem in this region. This is because manufacturing, machinery, chemicals, and allied industries are the main economic sectors on which developing nations in the ASEAN-5 area have concentrated their efforts. However, these are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In response, each of the ASEAN-5 nations has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions. Additionally, one of the crucial challenges that these nations face is the choice and modification of product structure. This study was conducted to analyze the impact of economic diversification, income per capita, foreign direct investment, and electricity consumption on carbon emissions in developing ASEAN-5 nations (Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) from 1986 to 2019. By adopting the pooled mean group approach, the empirical results showed that economic diversification reduces CO2 emissions while its square has the opposite effect. Electricity consumption positively influences carbon emissions in the long run, while economic growth drives environmental degradation both in the short and long run. Based on the findings, it can be recommended that ASEAN-5 governments increase economic diversification and reduce non-renewable energy consumption to promote sustainable development and environmental protection.

Nghiên cứu được thực hiện nhằm trả lời cho câu hỏi liệu sự tồn tại của kinh tế ngầm có thúc đẩy khai thác tài nguyên thiên nhiên và gây ô nhiễm môi trường ở Việt Nam hay không. Bằng chứng thu được từ kỹ thuật ước lượng tự hồi quy phân phối trễ cho thấy kinh tế ngầm: (i) Làm tăng nhu cầu sử dụng tài nguyên thiên nhiên trong dài hạn; (ii) Làm tăng lượng khí thải CO2 trong ngắn hạn, nhưng lại cải thiện tình trạng ô nhiễm môi trường trong dài hạn. Ngoài ra, với vai trò là biến kiểm soát, tăng trưởng kinh tế có tác động tích cực đến thúc đẩy tiêu thụ tài nguyên thiên nhiên lẫn ô nhiễm môi trường, trong khi phát triển con người sẽ giúp hạn chế sự suy thoái môi trường. Trên cơ sở các phát hiện, nghiên cứu gợi mở một số chính sách giúp thúc đẩy phát triển bền vững ở Việt Nam.

Digital transformation is a significant driver for better economic growth. However, it might lead to massive changes in the economy’s structure. So, the impact of digital transformation on the unemployment rate is an interesting topic, especially in emerging countries. In Vietnam, the relationship between digital transformation and unemployment has not been explored. By adopting the cointegration test, and autoregressive distributed lag approach, our results reveal a negative impact of digital transformation on the unemployment rate in the long term. Besides, the outcome also indicates that inflation negatively influences unemployment both in the short- and long-run. This demonstrates that maintaining a certain inflation rate and boosting investments in digital transformation will be two key elements in keeping unemployment under control in this nation. This discovery contributes to the development of recommendations for lowering Vietnam's unemployment rate.