A commonly proffered theory to explain the use of elections in authoritarian regimes is that they help identify talented young leaders who can be groomed for leadership positions. Unfortunately, due to the difficulties of obtaining data in authoritarian settings, this hypothesis has not been tested satisfactorily. We examine candidate-level data from the 2007 Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA) election and subsequent selection of candidates for top positions within the VNA and for top ministry positions. We find no evidence that vote share is associated with promotion to leadership positions in the VNA and only limited evidence for vote share association with ministerial posts. Instead, the results indicate that leadership selection takes place within the party rather than through elections. Furthermore, behavior within the assembly suggests that those who were chosen may have been selected based on their loyalty or at least pliancy to the party elites.
A growing literature demonstrates a strong statistical association between the presence of legislative opposition in authoritarian regimes and investment. This finding has been interpreted as evidence that authoritarian legislatures constrain executive decisions and therefore reduce the threat of expropriation. Although the empirical relationship is robust, the micro-logic of the relationship between authoritarian legislatures and property rights is both theoretically unsatisfying and empirically untested. Scholars have not provided systematic evidence that authoritarian parliaments are able to restrain the actions of state leaders, reverse activities they disagree with, or remove authoritarian leaders who violate the implied power-sharing arrangement. In this article, we provide an alternative explanation for the robust correlation. We argue that authoritarian legislatures, by providing a forum for horse trading between multiple private actors, are far better at generating corporate governance legislation that protects investors from the avarice of corporate insiders than they are at preventing expropriation by governments. Our statistical analysis reveals that the strength of authoritarian legislatures is associated with corporate governance rules and not expropriation risk.
This paper aims to quantitatively evaluate the microeconomic consequences of the four percent interest rate subsidy program – the main component of the Vietnamese government’s economic stimulus package in 2009¬, which was intended assist recovery from the global economic and financial recession. Our analyses based on the Provincial Competitive Index (PCI) 2009 survey and accounting data of firms listed on Vietnam’s two stock exchanges show that firms receiving subsidized loans were more likely to add labor, expand investment, and possess optimistic business plans. On the other hand, we find evidence that not all business activity generated by the stimulus led to productivity increases - a non-trivial proportion of subsidized loans were not used to invest in production or expansion, but for speculative activities such as real estate and stock market trading.