PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the asymmetric impacts of world oil price on macroeconomic variables in Vietnam, including domestic oil price, inflation and output growth.Design/methodology/approachThe mixed data sampling (MIDAS) approach is employed to examine the impact of world oil price changes on macroeconomic variables as the former is high-frequency data (daily), and the latter is low-frequency data, usually monthly or quarterly.FindingsChanges in world oil price cause asymmetric impacts on domestic oil price and inflation, but no significant effects on output growth. In terms of magnitude, a positive change in world oil price causes a stronger effect than a negative change in world oil price. In terms of timing, a positive change in world oil price causes a slow pass-through impact on domestic oil price and inflation. Meanwhile, domestic oil price and inflation decrease quickly following a negative change in world oil price.Originality/valueThis study investigates the asymmetric impact of oil price on the Vietnam economy in terms of both magnitude and timing, which is not explored by previous studies. In addition, it exploits daily information of oil price changes to analyse macroeconomic variables in lower frequency by employing MIDAS approach.