Is the Philippines moving away from migration?
Overseas labor migration and remittances continue to be very important features of the Philippine economy -- but less and less so.
Letter to the Board of Regents on the age requirement for the UP Presidency
There is nothing in the law, the Charter, the Code, or the University's cherished traditions to suggest that advanced age must be a factor in the administration of the University's affairs.
Education, location, and poverty
Why has economic growth, which has outstripped population growth, not made much of a dent in our poverty? Why have our Southeast Asian neighbors succeeded in bringing poverty incidence down to single-digit levels or even to zero?
Who are poor and do they remain poor?
Poverty is most severe and persistent for households with low human capital and the effect of human capital varies substantially across locations. Additionally, low human capital households tend to underinvest in the human capital of school-age members, thus likely perpetuating poverty.
Kristal Tejada, in memoriam
Oh UP! the realization of many years of dreaming. Then for a measly P6,000 tuition loan, she had to stop schooling. It was near-impossible for her parents to raise P6,000 to pay the loan on time. Where would a taxi driver find the funds for this large outlay?
Revisit the revision
Two quick points on the 3rd quarter GDP results that were released last Monday, showing a somewhat tepid 3.2 percent growth from the previous year: The first point is that it indicates the integrity of our national income accounts (NIA) and the people in charge of their computation. By this I mean that the National...
Stimulating investment and growth in the Philippines: the need for first-order market reforms
We show that the most important barriers to investment and growth in the Philippines are structural and institutional problems that are characteristic of limited access societies, which can be more effectively and efficiently overcome by prioritizing ‘first-order’ market reforms that increase competition and openness, rather than by government regulations that enforce against the distortions.
Investment, institutions, and governance in Asia
We investigate the extent to which the investment slowdown in many Asian countries since the Asian Financial Crisis is attributable to changes in governance institutions. In the process we test the more general hypothesis that different aspects of governance will become relevant constraints to investment and growth at differing levels of countries’ development
Is there really an investment surge?
The first quarter economic growth, though lower than last year’s, has been touted as investment-heavy and possibly a harbinger of better things to come. According to the newly-revised National Income Accounts (NIA) series, investments surged 37% year-on-year in the first quarter, a pace of growth that has not been achieved in more than two...
