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This paper examines whether heterogeneities in financial development among Vietnamese provinces matter for firm growth in Vietnam. Using a nationally representative firm survey that covers more than 41,000 firms for the period 2009 − 2013, we estimate the impact of provincial financial development on the growth rates of firms by accounting for sectoral differences in growth opportunities. We find that province-level financial development promotes the growth rates of sales, investment and sales per worker of small firms, and reduces the growth rate of the wage-to-sales ratio. Our results imply that firms grow faster in provinces with a higher level of financial development. Moreover, the effect of financial development on growth rates is larger when firms operate in sectors with better growth opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether local financial development could reduce the constraints for women to promote economic growth is an important question that has been paid little attention. In this paper, we use data of more than 40,000 firms collected in Vietnam from 2009 to 2013 to examine the effects of local financial development, male ownership and the joint effect of these factors on firm growth. To address endogeneity issues which might arise by the causality from firm growth to local financial development, we employ the heteroscedasticity-based identification strategy. The results show that local financial development promotes firm performance in terms of the growth rates of sales, investment, sales per worker, return on investment (ROI), return on assets (ROA), and return on equity (ROE). The results also suggest the difference in entrepreneurs' gender affects firm growth. Moreover, the joint effect of local financial development and male ownership is significantly negative through all specifications. This implies that local financial development could help reduce the gender gap in promoting firm growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of local financial development on household welfare in Vietnam. We employ household-level panel data for the periods 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2013 covering three provinces and measure local financial development at the district, sub-district and village levels. To account for potential endogeneity that could emanate from the fact that local economic development could spur local financial development, we employ a recently suggested method of identification through heteroscedasticity. Our results show that local financial development has a significantly positive effect on household annual income, consumption and consumption smoothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]