Search

This paper is motivated by the ongoing debate on university reform in Vietnam. In particular, there is a need to quantify the level of governmental support for public universities and examine whether or not such a support is adequate. To this end, the present paper estimates training costs per student in different disciplines within the Vietnamese public university education system in 2010. The various estimates of unit costs are based on the definitional approach which defines unit cost as the ratio of total costs over output. In measuring total costs, private costs incurred by university students (apart from formal tuition fees) are excluded. Further, the opportunity cost method employed emphasizes implicit costs such as imputed land rent. The total output is based on weighted student numbers. Unit costs are then estimated using a variety of primary (from survey) and secondary data sources. The results obtained suggest that the unit costs of public university education in Vietnam vary considerably between disciplines. The results also support the presence of economies of scale and scope in higher education and a negative relationship between unit costs and teaching quality proxies. The overall unit cost of public universities in Vietnam is very low in absolute terms when comparing with other countries. However, unit cost relative to GDP per capita in Vietnam is more comparable with those of neighboring countries. Nevertheless, the findings of the paper imply that more resources need to be allocated to the public university sector as part of an urgently needed university reform in Vietnam.

In 2017, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE)) ratified the Unified Value Added Tax (VAT) Agreement, which set out the general principles for imposing VAT and mandated each GCC member state to introduce a VAT by January 2018. Four GCC countries have so far introduced VAT, namely, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Oman. None of these countries possess a mature tax system. In fact, they also lack a well-defined tax culture and tax morale, and their tax administrations are not yet well developed. Thus, the introduction of VAT could give rise to a serious issue regarding VAT compliance burden. In this context, this article aims (i) to examine the new VAT in the four GCC countries, and (ii) to compare qualitatively the likely VAT compliance burden among these four countries, and relative to other VAT-imposing countries, specifically member countries of the Forum on Tax Administration (FTA). We adopt the VAT Diagnostic Tool approach, which has been developed by an Australia-based research team and applied successfully to assess VAT compliance burden in FTA countries. The findings of the article suggests that while the four GCC countries belong to the medium VAT compliance burden group, they compare very favourably with FTA countries. More specifically, they perform above the FTA average in minimising compliance burden that arises from VAT policy complexity and administration complexity, but below FTA average in terms of revenue capabilities in meeting taxpayer service and compliance needs. A small number of policy recommendations are proposed with a view to maintaining or improving the good performance of GCC countries in terms of VAT complexity. They include: (i) formal recognition of the importance of tax system simplicity; (ii) use of VAT Diagnostic Tool Factors/indicators in guiding the design or simplification of VAT policy and administration; (iii) restraint from making VAT policy and administration changes without supporting evidence, and (iv) capacity building in tax administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]