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Economic restructuring and responses to crisis: actors, institutions, and developments in rural Vietnam/Thailand

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez, Prof. Dr. Ingo Liefner (Uni Gießen), Prof. Dr. Ludwig Schätzl

Researcher: Jürgen Brünjes, Vera Junge, Franziska Sohns, Dominik Schmid (Uni Gießen)

Duration: 2010 - 2014

Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)


The project is the follow-up project of the "Shocks and regional economic development in Thailand and Vietnam" project that was completed in 2009. It is further part of the collaborative research unit "Impact of shocks on the vulnerability to poverty: consequences for development of emerging Southeast Asian economies”. This research unit assembles scientists from the fields of economics and economic geography from four different German universities.

Description of the economic geography sub-project


Recent research has shown that the vulnerability to poverty of rural households of rapidly developing economies is closely depending on regional development potentials: access towell-paid non-agricultural employment varies within rural areas as does the institutional environment, the levels of education, and the prospects for rural industrialization. However, the interplay of these factors and their influence on households’ decisions in the event of shocks is still poorly understood. The proposed research project aims to contribute to this debate, (1) by analyzing the spatial variation and the impact of locations on rural nonagricultural employment, (2) by assessing the impact of institutional environments on companies and self-employed, and (3) by analyzing the responses of individuals and companies to crisis and shocks as being partly determined by regional characteristics. The project relies on the results of a panel household survey, a migrant survey and on a survey of rural companies and small-scale (self-employed) businesses. It is jointly carried out by the applicants based at Leibniz-University of Hannover and Justus Liebig University Giessen, and it cooperates closely with the other subprojects of the Research Unit.