Khanh-Duy Nguyen Phan
Khanh–Duy Nguyen Phan

I am a Master's student in Applied Economics (Digital Economics track) at the University of Padova, Italy. I hold a Bachelor's degree in International Business (Honours, Summa Cum Laude) from Can Tho University, Viet Nam.

My fields of interest include Digital Economics, Environmental Economics, and Political Economy.

Contact: im.kduy@gmail.com
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Paper
Working Paper
Technology Spillovers from Special Economic Zones to Local Firms (with Associate Professor Saurabh Singhal)
Forthcoming
Can Trade Policy Separate Pirates from Piracy? Supply–Side Shutdowns and Demand–Side Enforcement in Online Copyright Markets
Forthcoming
Digital Adoption, Operational Depth, and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Vietnamese Manufacturing
This paper examines the relationship between digital technology adoption and firm productivity in Vietnamese manufacturing. Using administrative data on 59,000 firms from Viet Nam's 2020 Enterprise Survey, we construct a Digital Adoption Index (DAI, 0–7) and decompose it into connectivity readiness (internet, e-commerce, website) and operational depth (software, automation, IT investment). A one-unit DAI increase is associated with a 3.5% increase in total factor productivity. The decomposition reveals that the entire effect comes from operational depth, while connectivity readiness contributes nothing. Connectivity does predict operational depth, consistent with a technology ladder where basic access is necessary but insufficient. The digital-productivity gradient is steepest for large and foreign-invested firms, but insignificant for small firms.
Digital Sophistication across Vietnamese provinces
Research

Can Tho University

  • Teaching Assistant, KT113H Econometrics (Fall 2024, Fall 2025)
  • Teaching Assistant, KT110H Statistics for Business (Spring 2025)
  • Teaching Assistant, KT111H International Economics (Spring 2024)

University of Padova

Research Assistant for Associate Professor Leonardo Madio (May 2026 – Present)

  • Collected and structured Digital Service Acts compliance data across designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to track changes in platform governance practices.
  • Produced descriptive visualisations and summary statistics on moderation counts by platform to document heterogeneity in compliance responses.

    • James Madison University

    Research Assistant for Assistant Professor Huiyi Chen (April 2025 – April 2026)

    • Built custom Python scripts to crawl and extract social media engagement indicators (Facebook likes, followers, group members) for each labour union strike, enriching the Cornell ILR School's Labor Action Tracker dataset.
    • Processed and analysed a preliminary panel dataset of over 20 million observations using STATA.

    Can Tho University

    Research Assistant for Associate Professor Pham Le Thong (October 2022 – March 2025)

    • Led 5 research projects funded by USAID, the Alliance for Biodiversity & CIAT, and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training.
    • Designed survey questionnaires, cleaned and analysed datasets using STATA, visualised data using R.
    • Prepared and formatted manuscripts for journal submission.
    Honours & Awards
    Curriculum Vitae
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