University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City

Rapid growth in the consumption of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages has become a major public health concern in Vietnam. This study assesses the potential impacts of excise taxation on the consumption and welfare distribution of alcoholic beverages (beer and liquor) and non-alcoholic beverages, using nationally representative data from the 2018 Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) and a quality-adjusted Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS). We estimate price and expenditure elasticities and simulate alternative excise tax scenarios. The results indicate that demand for beverages in Vietnam is price responsive. A simulated 20% excise tax on non-alcoholic beverages is associated with a reduction in consumption of approximately 31%, while a 20% increase in alcohol excise taxes is associated with reductions of about 29.7% for liquor and 26.6% for beer. These effects are strongest among low-income households, reflecting greater price sensitivity. The simulated tax burden remains modest—equivalent to around 0.46% of total household expenditure for non-alcoholic beverages and 3.9% for alcoholic beverages—while generating additional fiscal revenue. These findings suggest that excise taxation on beverages, particularly when designed to target harmful products such as sugar-sweetened beverages, can contribute to reduced discretionary beverage consumption and support fiscal sustainability. Integrating tax reforms with complementary measures, including nutrition education and non-communicable disease prevention, may further enhance equity and effectiveness.

This article examines how climate policy uncertainty (CPU) affects corporate capital structure using firm-level data from 10 countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Employing a news-based measure of CPU and fixed effects models, I find that higher CPU is associated with significantly lower corporate debt financing, even after controlling for firm-, industry-, and country-level characteristics. Difference-in-differences analyses around the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period show that heavy-emitting firms reduce leverage more strongly than light emitters following heightened CPU. The results are robust across multiple specifications and alternative financing measures. Moreover, the negative financing response to CPU is weaker in countries with more stringent environmental regulations, highlighting the role of credible policy commitment. Overall, the findings suggest that CPU induces firms to adopt more cautious financing strategies and underscore the importance of stable and credible climate policies in shaping corporate financial decisions. JEL Codes: G32, Q51, Q58

This study examines how brand social responsibility (BSR) drives positive word-of-mouth (WOM) in service brands. Based on social identity theory, we propose that a brand’s commitment to societal welfare strengthens customers’ emotional attachment, fostering positive WOM. By exploring the BSR-WOM relationship, this study provides new insights into the dynamic mechanisms at play within service branding. Using a sequential two-stage mixed-methods approach, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews followed by an experiment and a large-scale survey. The findings highlight the pivotal role of BSR in cultivating brand commitment and explaining how brand experience enhances the effectiveness of BSR initiatives in driving positive WOM. This study advances ethical branding literature and provides implications for practitioners.

Federated learning (FL) offers a robust approach for privacy-preserving model training across distributed clients, but its performance often declines significantly under non-independent and identically distributed data, a critical challenge in real-world scenarios. Existing methods frequently face issues such as slow convergence, reliance on heuristic regularization, or substantial communication overhead. To address these challenges, we propose SelfDistillCore, a federated learning framework that combines a sparsification technique with a momentum-based aggregation rule using an exponentially weighted moving average. By transmitting only the top K% of parameter updates and using momentum to balance historical and new updates, SelfDistillCore mitigates client drift and reduces communication costs. Experimental results show that SelfDistillCore significantly enhances convergence stability, improves resilience to data heterogeneity, increases scalability, and reduces communication costs by 19% to 70% compared to standard baselines. The code of SelfDistillCore can be found at https://github.com/dongld-2020/selfdistillcore_pj .

This paper examines income dynamics among Vietnamese workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent recovery period. Using the Labor Force Survey (LFS) conducted by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam from 2020 to 2023, the study analyzes more than 1.5 million individual observations. A multinomial logit model is employed to predict the probability of income gains and losses based on demographic characteristics, human capital, employment attributes, and institutional factors. The results show that income differentiation mirrors labor market segmentation. First, female workers are more likely to experience income increases, while male workers have a higher probability of income losses, with odds ratios ranging from 1.04 to 1.07 and 0.87 to 0.99, respectively. This suggests that women may have stronger long-term income resilience. Second, individuals with higher educational attainment are less likely to suffer income declines and are also less likely to recover income losses in the post-pandemic period, highlighting the protective role of education against economic shocks. By focusing on income movements rather than income levels, the study offers new evidence that women do not necessarily face higher income risk; instead, they demonstrate relatively strong income adjustment capacity. These findings contribute to understanding how Vietnamese workers adapt to income uncertainty in the digital era.

This study investigates the impacts of geopolitical risks on corporate leverage decisions of Vietnamese listed firms from 2017 to 2024. The research findings reveal a negative impact of geopolitical risks on both corporate leverage and short-term leverage. That is, Vietnamese listed firms actively reduce corporate leverage and short-term leverage as firms face rising geopolitical risks and uncertainties. Additionally, the effects of geopolitical risks are more pronounced for financially unconstrained firms, HOSE- and HNX-listed firms. Based on the main findings, policymakers at government levels and managers at corporate levels should consider the impacts of geopolitical risks when designing and implementing new policies in order to mitigate the negative effects of these risks and increase the resilience of Vietnamese firms considering geopolitical risks and uncertainties.

This study aims to analyse the existing literature and identify major research trends at the intersection of organizational citizenship behavior and energy transition in energy-intensive industries. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database and include 155 English-language publications published between 2015 and 2025. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using R Studio (Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny) and VOSviewer to examine publication performance, influential journals and authors, geographical distribution, and thematic structures within the research domain. The results show a rapid expansion of research linking organizational behavior with energy transition, reflecting increasing scholarly attention to the behavioral and organizational dimensions of energy efficiency and low-carbon transition. The literature is mainly published in high-quality journals in energy economics, sustainability, environmental management, and organizational studies. Geographically, research activity is concentrated in Asia and Europe, with China emerging as the most productive contributor, followed by several European countries and other emerging economies. Keyword co-occurrence and thematic mapping identify four major research themes: organizational green management and sustainability foundations; pro-environmental and organizational citizenship behaviors and governance mechanisms; energy efficiency, energy consumption, and low-carbon transition dynamics; and system-level energy transition, policy, and stakeholder governance. The study also outlines future research directions to strengthen the integration of organizational citizenship behavior, energy economics, and sustainability perspectives in energy-intensive industries.

Abstract Cryptocurrencies have regained mainstream attention, with Bitcoinx′s recent rally renewing investor interest across the digital asset space. This study focuses on the connectedness and spillover effects among seven major digital assets to examine the asymmetric relationships conditional on market conditions and time horizons. To emphasize the significance of short- and long-term trading dynamics, we explore the state dependence of linkages during extreme upward and downward market movements. Our findings suggest a significant connectedness induced by Litecoin and Ethereum. Short-term fluctuations are the dominant drivers of crypto-market vulnerability across quantiles and frequencies. Pronounced upper-quantile connectedness emerges consistently across all markets. Interestingly, major currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Dash, act as receivers during upside and median market conditions, whereas Ethereum and Litecoin exhibit transmission effects. Moreover, no connectedness is detected between Ethereum and Bitcoin at extreme quantiles. The findings highlight the need for careful monitoring and risk assessment of extreme events, demanding careful risk monitoring during periods of turmoil.

This research uniquely investigates the nuanced mechanism by which two types of presence (social presence and telepresence) influence the urge to buy impulsively. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework, this study proposes that social presence and telepresence contribute to a multidimensional flow experience, unpacking it into concentration and perceived control as cognition, and enjoyment as affection, which in turn evoke the urge to buy impulsively. Further, the current research explores the causal relationships among these flow components. Using survey data from 306 Vietnamese viewers of livestreaming commerce and PLS-SEM for hypothesis testing, the findings demonstrate the significant role of social presence and telepresence in generating concentration, perceived control and enjoyment. Moreover, cognitive (i.e., concentration and perceived control) and affective (i.e., enjoyment) aspects of flow are causally related to influencing the urge to buy impulsively. These findings offer novel theoretical insights into the internal dynamics of flow in mediating presence-induced impulsive buying that are valuable for sellers aiming to enhance their livestreaming commerce strategies.