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Le, Duong Trung

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Last updated: May 19, 2025
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Duong Trung Le is an Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank. His research focuses on the labor market and enterprise performance in developing countries, and on environmental aspects of sustainable socio-economic development. He has published in peer-reviewed economics journals such as Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and World Development. Before joining the World Bank, Duong was a Postdoctoral Associate at Duke University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and an MBA in Management Information Systems from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

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2020 - 202562000 - 20191
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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Future Jobs: Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Platforms in East Asia and Pacific
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-19) Arias, Omar; Fukuzawa, Daisuke; Le, Duong Trung; Mattoo, Aaditya
    People in East Asia and Pacific (EAP) countries have prospered over the last few decades because of the growth in productive jobs. Do industrial robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital platforms threaten that development model? "Future Jobs" presents evidence that new technologies have thus far boosted employment. Increases in productivity and scale have outweighed the labor-displacing effects of automation technologies. However, the benefits have been uneven, favoring skilled workers while some less-skilled workers, in more routine and manual jobs, have been pushed into the informal sector. Digital platforms have generated new opportunities for the hitherto marginalized but also created insecurity for incumbent workers. Looking ahead, digitization will enhance the tradability of services, and AI will transform the production processes. EAP countries can benefit by equipping their workforce with the necessary skills and opening their long-protected services sectors to trade and investment. Policy makers, researchers, and businesses will find in this book both insights and questions on how best to harness the potential of new technologies to sustain prosperity in EAP countries.
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    Firm Entry, Exit and Suspension: Evidence from Household Businesses in Vietnam
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) Islamaj, Ergys; Le, Duong Trung; Pham, Thanh Minh
    Household businesses make up the majority of firms in developing economies. This paper uses a novel tax census database that covers the universe of tax-registered household businesses to analyze the entry and exit of owner-operated firms in Vietnam during January 2018 to August 2020. It documents new stylized facts about the survival dynamics of informal businesses. First, the entry and exit rates were about 5-6 percent a year for tax-registered household businesses during the pre-pandemic period. Second, an additional 25 percent of household businesses suspended their activity in a year on average, with the annual suspension duration exceeding 2.5 months. The suspension rate spiked to 40 percent during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Third, the findings show that the pandemic-related effects were more pronounced for businesses dependent on face-to-face interactions with customers and suppliers. However, these effects were short lived, and activity and earnings rebounded by August 2020. The findings may reflect the relatively short COVID-19 distress in Vietnam during the first phase of the pandemic, but they illuminate both the vulnerabilities and resilience of the household business sector.
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    The Road Not Taken?: Responding to the Energy Price Shock in East Asia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11-17) Pollitt, Hector; Islamaj, Ergys; Kitchlu, Rahul; Le, Duong Trung; Mattoo, Aaditya
    Several countries in East Asia have increased fossil fuel subsidies to keep consumer prices lower than currently high international prices. These subsidies are discouraging the shift in consumption away from fossil fuels, while high prices are encouraging investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Providing income transfers instead of price subsidies would encourage consumption of cleaner alternatives, while softening the welfare loss. And subsidizing investment in renewables would avert the risk of being locked in to fossil fuels. The total cost need not be higher than that of fossil fuel subsidies.
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    Managing Long COVID in East Asia and the Pacific
    (World Bank, Malaysia, 2021-10-07) Arur, Aneesa; Islamaj, Ergys; Kim, Young Eun; Le, Duong Trung; Somanathan, Aparnaa; Mattoo, Aaditya
    The highly contagious Delta variant is fueling new outbreaks in East Asia and the Pacific (EAP). It is becoming evident that COVID-19 (coronavirus) is not leaving any time soon and may be here to stay. Countries with high vaccination coverage show, however, that transition to a relativelybenign phase of "managed endemicity" may be possible. At current trends, and given vaccine availability, many EAP countries are expected to vaccinate more than 60 percent of their populations by the first half of next year. Achieving and sustaining high coverage will require improving distribution capacity, overcoming vaccine hesitancy, and expanding regional production of vaccines to ensure reliable supplies for persistent COVID-19. Countries will also need to sustain the process of testing, tracing, and isolation, as well as precautions such as social distancing and wearing masks. Finally, countries need to strengthen their health systems to cope with long COVID.
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    Lives versus Livelihoods during the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Testing Softens the Trade-off
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Islamaj, Ergys; Le, Duong Trung; Mattoo, Aaditya
    The early COVID-19 pandemic literature focused on the conflict between lives and livelihoods. But cross-country evidence reveals that across countries high mortality rates were often associated with large gross domestic product contractions. This paper shows that the presumed trade-off was associated with lockdowns as the primary instrument of containment. Early transition from lockdowns to testing-tracing-isolation-based containment softened the trade-off within countries and explains the absence of a trade-off across countries. The analysis finds that testing had positive indirect effects on growth and perhaps even positive direct effects. By allowing countries to relax shutdowns without compromising on containment, testing could have indirectly contributed to about a 0.6 percentage point boost in growth. By infusing greater confidence in people to step out and engage in economic activity, testing could have added another 0.6 percentage point to growth. As the world struggles to scale up vaccination in the face of new waves and variants, continued emphasis on testing could help limit infection without recourse to costly lockdowns.
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    The Spread of COVID-19 and Policy Responses
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01-07) Islamaj, Ergys; Kim, Young Eun; Le, Duong Trung
    Since early 2020, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has spread to most countries and territories around the world. For many countries, the second wave of infections is turning out to be more serious than the first. Notwithstanding the global spread of the virus, public policy responses have varied across countries and regions. This brief analyzes the spread of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of policy efforts to contain the disease across a large number of countries. The findings suggest that public health measures - especially testing - and economic support policies are associated with effective containment of the disease, and thus are supporting fundamental prerequisites for a resumption of normalcy. This brief examines the evolution of COVID-19 and public policy responses across country groups around the world; presents an econometric analysis of the relationship between the spread of infections and the policy responses; and concludes with main policy implications.
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    Labor Market Impacts and Responses: The Economic Consequences of a Marine Environmental Disaster
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04) Hoang, Trung; Le, Duong Trung; Nguyen, Ha; Vuong, Nguyen Dinh Tuan
    This paper examines the labor market impacts of a large-scale marine environmental crisis caused by toxic chemical contamination in Vietnam's central coast in 2016. Combining labor force surveys with satellite data on fishing-boat detection, the analysis finds negative and heterogeneous impacts on fishery incomes and employment and uncovers interesting coping patterns. Satellite data suggest that upstream fishers traveled to safe fishing grounds, and thus bore lower income damage. Downstream fishers, instead, endured severe impact and were more likely to substitute fishery hours for working secondary jobs. The paper also finds evidence on an impact recovery to fishing intensity and fishery income, and a positive labor market spillover to freshwater fishery.