My name is Trinh Pham, and I am an applied economist with research focusing on the intersection of development, labor, and environmental economics.
I am particularly interested in understanding the determinants of household livelihoods and resource allocation in low- and middle-income countries,
as well as the factors influencing educational decisions and labor market outcomes.
I am currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Korea Development Institute (KDI) School of Public Policy and Management.
I received my PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University in 2024. My doctoral research was recognized by the
Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics and the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.
We evaluate two randomized controlled trials in Bhutan testing whether near-peer mentoring can shift students’ educational preferences toward STEM and TVET pathways. Mentors provided personalized guidance, shared their ownexperiences, and offered information on admissions and labor market outcomes. The interventions significantly increased students’ interest and perceived knowledge, but had limited effects on actual applications or enrollment. In the STEM stream, limited follow-through appears linked to structural constraints such as academic selectivity and limited program capacity; for TVET, social stigma and parental skepticism likely
played a constraining role. These findings highlight the potential of light-touch, scalable mentoring to shape aspirations, while underscoring the need for complementary strategies to support behavior change and enable follow-through.
This paper reviews the feedbacks between structural transformation and
agriculture, and climate and the natural environment. The
longstanding development narrative often ignores nature’s influence
on factor productivity and stocks. We highlight missing linkages and
pose policy research questions regarding structural transformation
and environmental-economic feedback in low-income nations.
This paper provides a new explanation for ethnic disparities in education and health in Vietnam
by studying the relationship between frequent, small-scale adverse rainfall shocks and child human capital.
Exploiting plausibly random year-to-year variation in weather data that are linked to a longitudinal
household- and individual-level dataset over the period 2008–2017, I find that excess rainfall
during the annual typhoon season results in lower child subjective health status and school enrollment,
with disproportionate effects on children of ethnic minorities. The negative lagged effects on education
are concentrated in children at primary school start age, suggesting delaying children’s school entry is
a shock–coping strategy for poor ethnic minority households, albeit with potentially big negative long-run
effect on their child lifetime earnings. Estimates suggest that rainfall shocks can explain approximately 28%
of the observed ethnic gap in enrollment rates of children age 16–18 in the sample during the study period,
and most is due to heterogeneous effects of rainfall shocks among ethnic groups, not differences in exposure to rainfall shocks.
We combine nationally representative household and labor force survey data from 1992 to 2016 to provide
a detailed description of rural labor market evolution and how it relates to the structural transformation
of rural Vietnam, especially within the agricultural sector. Our study adds to the emerging literature on
structural transformation in low-income countries using micro-level data and helps to answer several
policy-related questions. We find limited employment creation potential of agriculture, especially for youth.
Rural-urban real wage convergence has gone hand-in-hand with increased diversification of the rural economy
into the non-farm sector nationwide and rapid advances in educational attainment in all sectors’ and regions’
workforce. Minimum wage laws seem to have played no significant role in increasing agricultural wages.
This enhanced integration also manifests in steady attenuation of the longstanding inverse farm size-yield
relationship. Farming has remained securely household-based and the family farmland distribution has remained
largely unchanged. Small farm sizes have not obstructed mechanization nor the uptake of labor-saving pesticides,
consistent with factor substitution induced by rising real wage rates. As rural households rely more heavily on
the labor market, human capital accumulation (rather than land endowments) have become the key correlate of
improvements in rural household well-being.
Working Papers
[1] Temperature Shocks, Worker Age, and Sectoral Reallocation into Informality: Evidence from Vietnam
Previously Circulated as Climate Change and Intersectoral Labor Reallocation in a Developing Country Weiss Fund Distinguished PhD Research Paper Award (NEUDC 2023, Harvard Kennedy School)
Do climate shocks push agricultural workers into formal or informal employment?
Using three decades of Vietnamese survey and weather data, I show that extreme
heat drives workers out of agriculture and into informal employment across all
age groups, but only younger workers also enter formal employment. A three-sector
Roy model links these patterns to temperature-driven declines in agricultural
returns, with agricultural attachment and age-varying formal-sector barriers
determining who exits and where they go. Supporting evidence confirms both
channels: heat reduces yields and farm revenue without price adjustments,
while job postings and a vignette experiment document age-based barriers in formal hiring.
[2] Who Benefits from Place-Based Industrial Policies? Labor Market Adjustments and Household Welfare in Vietnam
Governments routinely evaluate place-based policies by measuring their effects on formal employment and registered firms. But in settings where most workers earn their livelihoods outside the formal sector, this approach may understate total benefits and mischaracterize who gains. This paper examines this question in the context of industrial zones in Vietnam. To guide the empirical analysis, I develop a model of segmented local labor markets in which formal employment expands but remains constrained for less-educated workers. The model predicts that higher formal earnings raise demand for locally produced non-tradable goods and services, increasing returns to informal activities through an indirect local demand channel. Using nationally representative household survey data from 2002 to 2020 and a staggered difference-in-differences design, I find strong support for these predictions: less-educated households reallocate labor from agriculture toward informal services, increase labor diversification, and raise total income. Informal non-farm income accounts for three-quarters of their non-farm income gains, driven by non-tradable business formation. These gains translate into higher consumption and increased investment in children's schooling. Assessments based solely on formal employment would capture only a quarter of the income gains for less-educated households, substantially understating the welfare impact of industrial zones.
[3] Place-based Industrial Policies and Intergenerational Educational Inequality: Evidence from Vietnam
Intergenerational educational inequality remains substantial in many countries.
This paper studies whether place-based industrialization can reduce the
intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage. Using Vietnam’s
expansion of industrial zones and household survey data, I implement a
staggered difference-in-differences design comparing individuals
differentially exposed to zone openings. Industrial zones increase
school enrollment among 15–18-year-olds, with effects concentrated
among children whose parents did not complete upper-secondary school
, narrowing enrollment gaps by parental education.
Mechanism evidence points to household income as the primary channel:
less-educated households gain income from informal non-agricultural
activities—local demand spillovers rather than direct zone employment.
Anthropogenic climate change will likely intensify the negative environmental impacts of agriculture through powerful feedback loops.
This has important implications for development research, policy and R&D investment.
Teaching
KDI School
Development Economics (PhD)
Introduction to Development Policy (Master's)
Environmental Economics in Developing Countries (Master's)
Cornell University
TA, Applied Econometrics (Master's)
Math Camp for incoming Dyson MSc Students
TA, Economics of Developing Countries (Undergrad)
TA, Research and Methods (Master's)
TA, Risk Simulation and Monte Carlo Methods (Master's)
TA, Introduction to Economics of Development (Undergrad)
Office Hours
Office hours are by appointment only and are reserved for KDIS students.
If you are not a KDIS student but would like to meet, please send me an email.
KDIS students, please sign up for a meeting slot
here. Thank you!
Others
Below is a little bit more about myself and my academic journey.
