Thanh Dang is a PhD researcher in Economics at Monash University. His research focuses on behavioral economics, decision-making, and applied microeconomics, with working papers on social protection, migration, and trust mechanisms in economic behavior. He teaches principles of microeconomics and intermediate theory and maintains this site with his CV, working papers, presentations, and contact information.
Email: thanh.dang@monash.edu
Staying put: Social protection reduces migration and consumption growth (with Paulo Santos)
Abstract: We study the consequences of being a beneficiary of the Poverty Standard Program (PSP), the largest social assistance program in Vietnam, on migration decisions during the period 2010-2014. Because program eligibility requires meeting residence requirements, the program plausibly reduces the incentives to migrate. Benefiting from detailed data on income from the VHLSS that allows us to replicate PSP’s eligibility conditions, we use Regression Discontinuity Design to show that this hypothesis is supported in the data. Being a marginal beneficiary of PSP reduced the probability of having one migrant household member by 26%. We then investigate the medium term implications of this response to the program, and show that this reduction in migration leads to relatively small reductions in consumption.
Presence and performance: Academic and social outcomes of guided meditation (with Paulo Santos, Pham Khanh Nam, Kevin Berryman)
Abstract: This study investigates the causal impact of mindfulness meditation, delivered through the Contemporary Meditation app, on two distinct domains: academic performance and prosocial orientation. First-year students at a Vietnamese university were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (guided meditation) or a control group (non-meditative tasks), both administered via mobile apps over four weeks. Improvements in executive functions, attention and inhibitory control, are examined as potential mechanisms underlying these effects.
Conflict, identity, and trust: Mechanisms of trust erosion (with Duc-Manh Nguyen, Lata Gangadharan, Paulo Santos)
Abstract: This study investigates how the experience of conflict and the framing of post-conflict identity affect trust. In a pre-registered laboratory experiment in Vietnam, implemented shortly after the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, 534 participants were randomly assigned to either a control group (which played the Trust Game twice), or a treatment group that first engaged in a five-round Attacker/Defender game (reference) before playing the Trust game for a second time under four identity framings: paired with someone from the opposing side of the conflict, the same side, with no information about sides, or with a new, neutral group identity designed to symbolically represent an absence of relation with conflict. We find that playing the Attacker/Defender game (ie, being exposed to conflict in the lab) lowers trust by 13–21%, regardless of which side participants played in the conflict. Notably, the new identity label increases trust by 42% for individuals with personal or family history of real conflict.
Australasian Development Economics Workshop 2025 (UNSW Sydney)
ECC1000: Principles of Microeconomics (Teaching Evaluation Report not provided)
ECC2000/ECC5900: Intermediate Microeconomics (Teaching Evaluation Report: 96/100)