The United States of America is the top trading partner of the Philippines and also the top destination of highly skilled and professional Filipino workers. This paper explores the possibility of a free trade agreement (FTA) that covers the asymmetries of the two countries in labor, services and...

The paper examines the policies pursued by the Philippines in response to the increasing economic integration and interdependence of nations and regions around the world, focusing in particular on the country’s multi-track approach to trade and investment liberalization. The country’s...

Competition policy is integral to the process of liberalization of international trade regime and deregulation in domestic markets. This paper shows that even if trade barriers are removed, there are other factors that can impede the pro-competitive effects of trade liberalization. These include...

For the Philippines, quantitative policy analysis should incorporate regional differences in welfare and economic structure, which arise partly from geographic constraints. However, existing CGE models offer limited analysis of regional effects or national impacts of region-specific...

This paper examines the total factor productivity performance (TFP) of the Philippines in the 1990s in order to provide a picture of the extent of the productivity concern that needs to be addressed in the Medium-Term National Action Agenda for Productivity, 2000-2004. The findings show that...

To shed light on the difficulties in discussing the issue of protectionism, this study analyzes the overall impact of non-tariff measures (NTM) to the Philippine exports. It also attempts to make an inventory of NTM imposed by United States, Japan and European countries, affecting most, if not...

Applying a conjectural variations (CV) model introduced by Haskel and Scaramozzino (H&S model 1997), the paper examines the impact of trade liberalization on the Philippine cement industry where alleged cartel activities have taken place after the entry of the world's Big Three cement firms:...

This paper is part of the Philippine study for the Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint, a project of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). A milestone in ASEAN economic cooperation is the Cebu Declaration on the Acceleration of the...

The world-trading environment has witnessed the proliferation of regional trading arrangements during the last decade. This development has been accompanied by the perceived threat this may bring to the rules-based multilateral trading system. The Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), for...

The paper aims to review our trade liberalization policy and its contribution to the country`s industrial growth and performance. After more than twenty years of liberalization, the overall performance of the manufacturing industry has been weak, growth has been slow, and contribution to value...