The Philippines has been more cautious in its policy toward free trade agreements (FTAs) than other ASEAN member-states, having signed, so far, only one bilateral agreement with Japan in addition to the various ASEAN+1 agreements. While the government is expected to progressively reduce...

The study identifies outstanding issues and bottlenecks and provides recommendations to facilitate the Philippines' full compliance to its commitments to the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Various in-depth interviews and surveys were conducted with concerned stakeholders from government...

The economic reform process in the Philippines was accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. The reforms were found to have yielded positive results in terms of the nature of industrial agglomeration in the country as this was found to have occurred in the 1990s based on the results of the survey and...

Research and development (R&D) is an important resource for sustained economic growth. New knowledge created by a firm has spillover effects that improve the productivity of other firms and even other sectors. This is the heart of endogenous growth theory. In this framework, government policies...

Over the past sixty years, the concept of development has expanded from economic growth and investment, to poverty reduction, human development, sustainable development, and more recently to institutional development. There has also been a fresh look at industrial policy and the role of the...

This paper discusses public and private institutions that were established in the Philippines to provide services to Filipino international migrant workers. Thirty years of having explicit policy on international labor migration has resulted to the creation of various public agencies to promote,...

Indigent membership in PhilHealth has surged in recent years, driven by the nation-wide identification of the poor. However, the massive identification has led to the enrollment of more members than official poverty estimates, resulting in leakages in the government's social health insurance...

The Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, among others, added two years in secondary education thereby delaying entry into higher education by two years. This was expected to displace teaching and non-teaching personnel in higher education. To mitigate the impact, the law mandated the Commission...

The formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has been set in motion worldwide and its conclusion does not appear imminent in the near future. In the face of such developments, the Philippines is hard pressed to formulate a more rational FTA policy framework to deal with not just external, but...

Within the context of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Scorecard mechanism developed by the ASEAN Secretariat to monitor the implementation of the AEC Blueprint, the study focuses on the current state, performance and impact of investment liberalization and facilitation, trade facilitation,...