Globalization and Aid Inflows in the Economic Growth of Vietnam

This paper aims to reveal the sources of the rapid growth of the Vietnamese economy since economic reform over the period 1986-2013. It applies the autoregressive distributed lags variance bounds test and the error correction model, focusing on the roles of globalization and aid in economic growth. The empirical evidence supports neither the export-led nor the FDI-led economic growth hypothesis. Rather, the increase in import values is revealed to have caused economic growth. When the import variable is excluded from the estimated model, aid inflows are shown to have caused the economic growth in Vietnam.