The contribution of the environmental-resource sector to national well-being is the sum of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Inasmuch as existing resource stocks are below efficient levels, better enforcement of existing laws as well as policies that incentivize...

The Philippines provides a leading example of Rodrik’s Rule that developing countries experience deindustrialization at lower levels of per-capita income than did developed countries. Previous studies point to the role of protectionist policies, financial crises, and exchange rate...

The Filipinos’ vision for themselves by 2040 is for them to enjoy a stable and comfortable lifestyle, having enough for their daily needs and unforeseen expenses, so they can plan and prepare for their own and their children’s futures. This paper looks at one major commodity that bears...

Every political dispensation in recent decades has taken the view that the country has to be able to feed itself. For the country’s political leaders and the agriculture bureaucracy, this has meant that rice, the country’s staple food, has to be locally produced at quantity sufficient to...

Theoretical and empirical support for a more liberal trading environment has grown increasingly over the years. In the last decade, many countries have aggressively pursued unilateral trade liberalization. Based on decadal growth rates, globalizing developing countries has outpaced growth of...

The institutional economics if John Commons (1934) contained two related objectives. The first was to explain the evolution of economics. The second was to analyze the effects of institutions on resource allocation and the distribution of income. The method of explaining the evolution of...

In poorly developed market economies, high transactions and related costs, produce a pattern of market organizations with heavy relianceon traditional institutions for handling transactions.The family is one such institution because family ties or bonds allow more efficien, tcontractual...

Most works on food security have a macroeconomic orientation, whereas most discussions of famine are rather microeconomic. The intention here is to seek a more unified approach to the economic issues in food insecurity among low-income rural households.

Much of the debate on the role of agriculture in economic development centers on whether agriculture should be taxed or subsidized. The classical prescription for economic development is investment in industrial modernization financed by an agricultural surplus. Proponents of agricultural...

Strikingly different patterns of agricultural growth and widely divergent results in terlnsof rural income. poverty. and employment have cmcrged in Southeast Asia. In the Philippiies, with someregional variations, a patterns of declining red farm wages,increasing landlessness in worsening...