Given the overwhelming number of ineffective economic reform policies and programs, a central question for international development concerns how significant economic change happens. In the midst of this quandary, a puzzle has been growing quietly the last two decades. Vietnam has transitioned from a poor, centrally planned economy to one of the fastest growing, market economies in the world, despite ignoring conventional reform strategies. This book focuses on solving a specific puzzle of Vietnam's transition. Its fastest growing city, Ho Chi Minh City, has a real estate industry that ranks as the worst place in the world for private capital to invest . Nevertheless, entrepreneurs have emerged to form private firms within the first decade of transition. Where did these people come from? How could they conduct business in such an inhospitable economic environment? The book finds that the transition to capitalism is neither the natural propensity of individuals nor the decision of an all-powerful state nor necessarily requires a long, evolutionary process.The major, rapid, and discontinuous economic change that occurred in Vietnam was fundamentally enabled by a social reconstruction of cognitive paradigms. The new social cognition framework accounts for why some firms were more successful than others as well as why Vietnam's capitalism has surprising characteristics.

Annette M. Kim is Ford International Career Development Associate Professor of International Urban Development at M.I.T.'s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She teaches courses on property rights, public finance, housing, and project appraisal in developing countries.

Annette M. Kim received her Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of California, Berkeley in City and Regional Planning as well as a concurrent M.A. in Visual Studies; a M.P.P. in 1995 from Harvard University in public policy and urban planning; and in 1990 a B.A. in Architecture and Studio Art from Wellesley College. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, the World Bank, African and Asian governments, as well as community-based NGOs. Professionally, she worked as an architect of low-income housing and construction project manager of commercial projects in the United States.