This paper provides a review of the empirical evidence cited in the current public discussions on removing the remaining constitutional restrictions on foreign-equity ownership in certain economic sectors. A fuller appreciation of the given evidence shows that lifting equity restrictions is not...

We are pleased to note that the discussion paper we wrote ("How to change a constitution by handwaving") has attracted some interest from the public and observers of economic policy. Among the more thoughtful responses the paper has received is that from the Foundation for Economic Freedom...

This paper explores whether and how well the Philippines' Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and National Climate Budget (NCB), derived from the national climate change expenditure tagging system (CCET), are aligned. The CCET was operationalized in 2015 to "provide line and oversight...

Informal housing arrangements, substandard structures, congestion, and land use conflicts characterize the urban housing problem in the Philippines. The record suggests that the response of the State, especially its reliance on below-market priced mortgage loans, has aggravated rather than...

The following note seeks to clarify the appreciation of data pertaining to agrarian reform as used in the discussion paper "CARP: time to let go" (henceforth Fabella (2014)). Fabella (2014) has three parts: the first part argues that "the cumulative weight of evidence suggests that the...

The act of increasing the number and penetration of presidential appointees in the bureaucracy is referred to as politicization. While politicization can be a short-term strategy for improving agency performance, it has been argued that politicization erodes the civil service corps in...

The measured underspending over the last 5 years has more to do with ambitious targets rather than apathetic or incompetent bureaucrats: while actual disbursements fell short of planned disbursements by about ten percent per year from 2011 to 2015, real per capita disbursements on capital...