My name is Trinh Pham and I am an applied economist researching (i) the interrelationship between economic development and the environment,
and (ii) the determinants of human capital in low- and middle-income countries.
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 May 2024.
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 (Draft Available Upon Request)
[1] Mentoring, Educational Preferences, and Career Choices: Evidence from Two Field Experiments in Bhutan
Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
with Ryotaro Hayashi ,
Hyuncheol Bryant Kim
and Norihiko Matsuda
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.
[2] Climate Change and Intersectoral Labor Reallocation in a Developing Country Weiss Fund Distinguished PhD Research Paper Award (NEUDC 2023, Harvard Kennedy School)
Using nearly three decades of Vietnamese data, I document the heterogeneous effects
of temperature changes on intersectoral labor reallocation across regions and demographics.
Extreme heat generally shifts workers from agriculture to non-agriculture in
both the short and long term. While all workers face similar probabilities of entering
informal non-agricultural jobs, younger individuals are more likely to secure formal
employment. In less globally integrated regions, extreme heat increases agricultural labor
shares and reduces consumption expenditure. These findings align with a model
of costly labor reallocation, emphasizing trade openness and intersectoral switching
costs as critical factors linking climate shocks to employment dynamics.
[3] Extreme Heat and Agriculture When Labor Endowment Matters
This paper investigates how smallholder farmers with varying labor endowments adapt
to extreme heat, using household-level data from Vietnam combined with temperature
records. I find that extreme heat significantly reduces agricultural production, with its
impact on total output varying by household labor composition. Farms with younger
workforces experience little to no output loss, while those with older labor suffer disproportionately.
Although farm productivity declines across all households, younger
farmers adapt by reallocating labor and increasing reliance on machinery, whereas
older households make fewer adjustments. These findings suggest that farmers modify
input use as a short-term strategy to buffer against heat stress while navigating nonfarm
labor market opportunities that differ across generations. These insights have important
implications for agricultural extension services and input supply chains, helping
to inform the targeted diffusion of labor-saving technologies as farmers grapple
with a changing climate.
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), Fall 2024
Cornell University
TA, Applied Econometrics (Master's), Fall 2021/2023
Math Camp for incoming Dyson MSc Students, Summer 2022
TA, Economics of Developing Countries (Undergrad), Spring 2021-2022
TA, Research and Methods (Master's), Fall 2020
TA, Risk Simulation and Monte Carlo Methods (Master's), Spring 2020
TA, Introduction to Economics of Development (Undergrad), Fall 2019
Office Hours
Office hours are by appointment only. Please sign up
here if you'd like to meet. Thank you!
Others
Below is a little bit more about myself and my academic journey.
