My research is at the intersection of spatial economics, international trade, and development economics. It aims to evaluate how large-scale policy changes affect overall welfare and equity in economic opportunities. I apply trade and microeconomic theories and employ data from countries that have experienced significant legal reforms, such as Vietnam.
Working Papers
Place-based Policy, Migration Barriers, and Spatial Inequality
What makes place-based incentives for firms succeed at reducing spatial inequality? The answer depends on where workers migrate and thus on how migration costs vary across destinations. I develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with firm dynamics and endogenous public services. Vietnam’s enterprise tax and household registration reforms provide variation in place-based incentives and migration costs. I exploit these variations to discipline key elasticities. I find that where migration costs fall matters more than how much they fall. When migration barriers fall toward secondary cities rather than metropolitan areas in Vietnam, the redistributive effect of place-based incentives increases fivefold.
We study how trade liberalization affects sex selection in a son-preferring society. Using the Vietnam–US 2001 trade agreement as a natural experiment, we exploit industry-level tariff cuts in a difference-in-differences framework. We find that women in exposed industries are more likely to have male children, work more, and have fewer births—effects driven solely by maternal, not paternal, exposure. A quantity-quality model with maternal time costs explains these patterns. Our findings reveal that rising maternal opportunity costs, rather than income or relative returns effects, can increase sex selection during economic transitions.
@unpublished{HuynhNguyen:2025,Author = {Nghi\^em Q. Hu\`ynh and Ngoc T. T. Nguyen},Note = {Working paper},Title = {Trade, Maternal Time Costs, and Sex Selection: Evidence from Vietnam},Year = {2025}}