Thong Tien Nguyen

Sustainable Consumption and Production in Vietnam

Vietnam is located on the eastern margin of the Indochinese peninsula, Southeast Asia. The country has a total area of over 332 km, along with about 1,000,000 km of exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and a population of 90.6 million (est. 2014). Through the 1986 reform (Đổi Mới), shifting from a highly centralised planned-economy to a social-oriented market economy, Vietnam has enjoyed high growth of 6–7% per year. The country has been transformed from one of the poorest in the world, with per capita income below USD 100 in the early 1990s, to a lower middleincome country with per capita income of over USD 2,000 by the end of 2014. Over the last few decades, Vietnam has made a remarkable progress in poverty reduction. The percentage of people living in poverty dropped from almost 60% in the 1990s to less than 3% today [World Bank, 2015]. Thanks to the economic reform, Vietnam has achieved long-term progress in basic dimensions of human development. The Human Development Index (HDI) value of Vietnam increased from 0.439 in 1990 to 0.638 in 2013, positioning the country in the medium human development category in the Copyright

Implicit price of mussel characteristics in the auction market

This study explores desired and undesired characteristics of mussels in wholesale market by applying hedonic price analysis. Transaction data in auction market in Yerseke, the Netherlands, was used to estimate linear and semi-log price models. Meat content and size count, which are measured as the ratio of the weight of cooked meat to the total weight and the number of mussel per kg of raw mussels, respectively, are the most important characteristics determining the price. At the sample mean, if the meat content increases by 1%, farmers can get a premium price of 5.5 eurocents kg−1 of raw mussel. Mussel lots with size counts below 50 pieces kg−1 can command the highest implicit price of size. Processors prefer mussel lots in which the size of mussels is more or less heterogeneous. The impurity of mussel lots, which is measured by the percentage of tare, the amount of barnacles and limpets per kg of raw mussels are significant discounting factors on the price. The study also investigates the impact of farming locations and seasons on the price and the price trend during the period of 2002–2009.