NUOL researcher wins Toyoda Award
NUOL researcher wins Toyoda Award
A researcher at the Faculty of Economics and Business Management, National University of Laos, has won the Toyoda Award, which was created especially for the faculty.
The first winner of the award has been named as Dr Phouphet Kyophilavong, who is an Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the faculty.
Professor Emeritus Toyoda Toshihisa from Kobe University in Japan established the Toyoda Award with his own funds. The prize promotes research activities at the Faculty of Economics and Business Management.
Professor Toyoda was involved in the establishment of the faculty and is known as the Father of the Faculty of Economics and Business Management.
The primary condition for winning the award is that the awardee must have published articles in refereed international journals. The committee of the Toyoda Award then selects the best article based on three main criteria: relevance of the study, ranking of the journals, and quality of the articles.
The winning article is titled Mining booms and growth in Laos empirical results from Computable General Equilibrium model, published in the International Journal of Development Issues in May 2016.
The paper provided empirical evidence of the impact of the mining sector on the Lao economy. The findings of this article show that mining sector development has had a positive impact on the Lao economy, which has led to an increase in higher real gross domestic product, exports and investment.
Unfortunately, the findings of the article also show that there are negative impacts from mining, which are described by the economic concept of Dutch disease. The mining sector might slow the production and export of the agriculture and industrial sectors. In addition, this article calls for the government to implement suitable macroeconomic management and prudent administration of the windfall income from mining.
Supporting research activities is key to promoting and strengthening innovation and technology development and is crucial for long term development in Laos.
