Less or more rain, forever pain? This paper examines the long-run and intergenerational effects of early-life exposure to droughts and wet shocks on human capital outcomes over the life course. Combining a unique three-decade longitudinal survey of pregnant mothers in Metropolitan Cebu, the...

This study offers a descriptive analysis of complex thinking as a form of cognitive competency among a group of 52 public servants holding local leadership positions in the Philippines. By extending the empirical examination of complex thinking beyond educational contexts and into local public...

We probed the evolving landscape of social enterprises (SEs) in the Philippines by examining how practitioners define their identity, legitimacy, resilience, and ecosystem support needs. Using key informant interviews (KIIs) with SEs affiliated with The Spark Project (TSP), we unpack grassroots...

We investigated the relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance and corporate financial performance (CFP) among publicly listed firms in the Philippines from 2015 to 2024. Utilizing Bloomberg's ESG scores, we employed a triangulated econometric framework that...

Non-traditional platform work has grown rapidly in the Philippines amid technological change and longstanding labor-market constraints. Using nationally representative data from the 2025 Jobs and Skills Survey (JSS), this study provides a detailed profile of workers engaged in these emerging...

This paper estimates the pass-through of world oil price innovations to Philippine fuel prices and headline CPI, and decomposes total CPI pass-through into a fuelbasket component and a residual non-fuel component. Using a recursive SVAR and 25 years of monthly Department of Energy pump price...

We assessed whether health spending of local government units in the Philippines is sufficient to deliver mandated primary health care (PHC) services under a devolved system, how PHC spending varies with fiscal capacity, and whether increased intergovernmental transfers following the...

Non-traditional platform work has grown rapidly in the Philippines amid technological change and longstanding labor-market constraints. Using nationally representative data from the 2025 Jobs and Skills Survey (JSS), this study provides a detailed profile of workers engaged in these emerging...

This paper estimates the pass-through of world oil price innovations to Philippine fuel prices and headline CPI, and decomposes total CPI pass-through into a fuel-basket component and a residual non-fuel component. Using a structural VAR and 25 years of monthly pump price data, I find that a 10...

This paper examines how digital financial platform engagement influences financial inclusion in the Philippines and explores how financial institutions are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing these platforms. It combines nationally representative data from the World Bank Global...

The Philippines aspires to become a predominantly middle-class society by 2040. Significant strides have been achieved in the reduction of extreme poverty. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of recent gains and the vulnerability of many households to economic shocks. This study...

This paper examines how digital financial platform engagement influences financial inclusion in the Philippines and explores how financial institutions are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing these platforms. It combines nationally representative data from the World Bank Global...

This study examines the career aspirations of economically disadvantaged Filipino children participating in the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the Philippines' flagship conditional cash transfer program. Using data from 9,958 children aged 10 to 25 collected through the Fourth Wave...

The Philippines is actively pursuing a renewable energy (RE) transition to meet its NDC targets and the COP28 pledge to triple global RE capacity. Under the Philippine Energy Plan 2023–2050, the government aims to raise the RE share to 50 percent by 2050, supporting energy security and the...

The Philippines is highly exposed to natural hazards, which are increasingly intensified by climate change, yet quantitative studies on the macroeconomic effects of climate shocks in the country remains limited. This paper finds that category-5 typhoons exert inflationary pressures on regional...

This note synthesizes the World Bank’s approach to supporting the Philippines in addressing the plastic waste crisis. As one of the largest contributors to marine plastic pollution globally, the Philippines is estimated to leak more than 0,3 million metric tons of plastic waste into the ocean...

The Philippines aspires to become a predominantly middle-class society by 2040. Significant strides have been achieved in the reduction of extreme poverty. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of recent gains and the vulnerability of many households to economic shocks. This study...

Amid the evolving U.S.-China tariff realignment and the broader restructuring of global value chains, this paper evaluates the vulnerability and strategic positioning of the Philippines alongside four other ASEAN economies-Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. For the ASEAN-5, the key...

The Health Facilities Enhancement Program (HFEP) is a capital investment grant administered by the Department of Health (DOH), designed to help local government units (LGUs) augment their health infrastructure, such as primary healthcare facilities, hospitals, and equipment. Over the past...

This paper combines labor force survey microdata with measures of occupational AI exposure and complementarity to examine the potential impact of recent advancements in AI on the Philippine labor market. We find that around one third of workers are highly exposed to AI with around sixty percent...

ECCD discourse, policy, and research have understandably focused on parents: their roles, knowledge, practices, and lived experiences. However, it truly 'takes a village' to raise a child, perhaps particularly so in a very intergenerational, communal society like the Philippines where both of...

We estimate natural-disaster impacts on children's school enrollments and math skills and test for impact heterogeneities with respect to age and gender in seven countries in Asia and the Pacific, which is the world's most disaster-prone region. We link survey data on children aged 5 to 17 to...

This report proposes a framework in tagging nutrition expenditures of national government agencies. The framework was developed through exhaustive literature review and validation sessions with government agencies. It comprised of five levels (5) of classification elements namely: major...

In low resource settings where it is challenging to obtain accurate weight-for-height Z-scores (e.g., equipment to accurately measure height and weight is not readily available, minimally trained community health workers, etc.), the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) is a simple tool used to...

In light of recent pronouncements of tariff hikes in the United States (US) and the retaliatory responses of major economies such as China, Canada, and Mexico, this paper revisits the global value chains (GVC) experience of the Philippines amid the trade tensions between China and the US from...

Joint programming, also referred to as convergence, in social protection and economic inclusion interventions has emerged as a critical strategy for addressing persistent poverty in the Philippines. Despite the government's ambitious target to reduce poverty from 18.1% in 2021 to 9% by 2028,...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly impacted people's lives, social activities, and businesses. It particularly affected micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which account for the vast majority of firms and most of the labor force. Compared to larger firms,...

In the Philippines, hospital efficiency and quality are rarely measured because of the limited availability of administrative health data. We used 37 million inpatient claims from PhilHealth (2018-2023) to estimate hospital efficiency and quality across the Philippines. We found stark variation...

This paper explores the possibility of using voluntary carbon credits to retire coal-fired power plants early. It introduces carbon emission trading using the example of the substantial European emissions trading market. It presents recommendations for phasing out coal power plants and discusses...

The Universal Health Care (UHC) Act of 2019 introduces comprehensive reforms to address longstanding demand and supply constraints in the Philippine health system. Key reform areas include shifting provider payment mechanisms of PhilHealth to a global budget and expanding primary healthcare...

We present an historical background and narrative of Spanish policies affecting Philippine trade that maps them onto the changing landscape of influential ideas and emerging political and economic exigencies confronting the colonizing power. An integral or global perspective is adopted that...

This study examines the effect of a typhoon on low-income urban neighborhoods in the Philippines during the coronavirus disease quarantine. Using household panel data, we assess welfare-as measured by psychological distress, food consumption, and human capital investment-exploiting...

This paper explores the links between conflict, land, and indigenous peoples on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The analysis takes advantage of the unprecedented concurrence of data from the 2020 census, an independent conflict data monitor for Mindanao, and administrative...

In this report, we characterize the government health expenditures, examine the fragmented and overlapping nature of different financing streams, and propose a framework to address these challenges. In the past decade, the Philippines has experienced unprecedented growth in government health...

Monetary and Capital Markets (MCM) department delivered a hybrid technical assistance (TA) mission to assist the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in developing a supervisory framework for operational resilience. An earlier mission in 2022 assisted BSP to develop a regulatory framework for...

Purpose: Since 2000, the Philippines has experienced significant growth domestic product (GDP) growth, particularly in the Information Technology Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector, highlighting the need for skill development through Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET)....

The Next 1000 days of a child's life (spanning from the age of two to five years) offer a window of opportunity to build on early gains to sustain or improve trajectories of healthy development. The Next 1000 Days is crucial for cognitive, motor, and socio-emotional development. As such, this...

Violence against children (VAC) has profound and lasting effects on physical and emotional well-being, educational outcomes, and economic productivity. In low- and middle-income countries such as the Philippines, limited longitudinal data hinders researchers from examining the medium- and...

This study explores the conceptualization and operationalization of middle skills within the Philippine context, examining how various institutions define and implement middle-skills training. It also assesses the alignment of these training programs with workforce demands, particularly in...

Despite significant progress in reducing poverty, the Philippines continues to face high inequality, which stayed elevated in the early 2000s as the economy grew. Although inequality has gradually declined since 2012, it remains among the highest in Southeast Asia. This paper examines how...