Economic linkage in key economic zones: The case of Vietnam

Abstract

This study was conducted to measure the level of economic linkage in key economic zones in central Vietnam generally and to measure the level of economic linkage in the tourism sector. Secondary data were collected from the Statistical Yearbook published by the General Statistics Office and the Local Bureau of Statistics and primary data collected from surveys of 102 hotels and tourism firms in the center of Vietnam. We used the Moran Index (I) to quantify overall economic aggregation across the region and that scoring method was used to measure the degree of linkage in regional tourism. The results show that the level of overall regional economic linkages was very low and this was also relevant when analyzing the tourism sector in some areas of the center of Vietnam. Based on the results, some recommendations are given for strengthening economic linkages in key economic regions of Vietnam.

Keywords

• Economic linkage
• Tourism linkage
• Vietnam