The private economy sector in Vietnam is a quite recent phenomenon that emerged in the process of the Vietnamese reform and renovation process (doi moi). In Western languages we find rather few publications addressing that sector. For many Western scholars Vietnamese material is rarely available. Therefore, more information might be of interest for scholars interested in Southeast Asian developments. This Working Paper contains three contributions on private sector development in Vietnam. The first paper was written by Prof. Tuong Lai, former Director of the Institute of Sociology, National Center for Humanities and Social Sciences in Hanoi who is currently a member of the Research Institute under the Vietnamese Prime Minister. Author of the second paper is Nguyen Duc Vinh, a research fellow of the Institute of Sociology in Hanoi. The papers from Tuong Lai and Nguyen Duc Vinh were presented to a workshop on "Private Entrepreneurship in China and Vietnam" at Gerhard-Mercator University Duisburg in May 1999. The third paper, written by Thomas Heberer and Arno Kohl, addresses preliminary findings of a research project on the private economy in Vietnam, conducted in 1996 (a five months field study) and was funded by the German Research Council (DFG). The authors of the papers are solely responsible for the contents of their papers and the English version.