Excessive party switching potentially weakens accountability and ideological coherence based on which party-based democracies operate. This study empirically analyzes party switching in the Philippine House of Representations, touching on issues at the macro-level (e.g. the legislative model) to...

This paper estimates that 40 centavos out of every 1 peso in potential revenues is lost to corruption in the Philippine Bureau of Customs. Ending the “corruption finance” propagated through tax leakages in the BOC could be good in and of itself for the country, but international evidence and...

This paper examines possible reforms in the income tax regime of the Philippines, highlighting some of the proposals recently discussed in the Philippine legislature. Because it will focus only on income taxes, it will stop short of assessing what might be considered an optimal tax structure....

Much more sober economic growth prospects are expected to characterize the world's largest industrial countries, under what some experts call the “new normal”. Recent global economic reports acknowledge that the era of high economic expansion could be over; and that even as industrial...

Households and businesses need to cope and thrive in an increasingly shock-prone world. Development and poverty reduction strategies need to take careful account of efforts to promote not just more resilient households and communities; but also more resilient firms on which many jobs and...

In this paper, we propose that development trajectories in Philippine provinces are not just influenced by the concentration of power within certain families (fat dynasties) but also by the economic and institutional contexts that they are characterized with. Building on a typology of dynasty...

This study presents a comprehensive process evaluation of the Department of Education's Alternative Learning System (ALS) in the Philippines, examining its effectiveness in providing second-chance education opportunities for out-of-school youth and adults (OSYAs). While the ALS plays a vital...

In almost 30 years of implementation, the Sangguniang Kabataan, which is the Philippines’ version of the village youth council, has faced many challenges, from accusations of exposing ineffective and corrupt practices to young leaders to allegations of electoral malpractices such as...

President-elect Joseph Biden faces challenges both at home and abroad in the aftermath of the Trump administration. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the United States, with over 23.5 million reported cases by early 2021. Much like many nations under lockdown and reeling from supply...