News & Announcements
UPSE-PCED Seminar Series – 19 May 2026
ABSTRACT Amidst slower global growth, a shifting labor market, and rising protectionism, governments around the world are increasingly turning to a once controversial policy. Industrial policy—the range of policy tools governments use to shape what an economy produces, rather than leaving it to markets alone—is back with a vengeance. Contrary… Read More.
New Faculty Publication – Current Account Dynamics and the Philippine Economy: Developments and Prospects (chapter contributions)
About the Publication This book critically examines the Philippines’ current account (CA) dynamics and their implications for long-term economic growth. Although existing studies have investigated the Philippines’ CA dynamics, this book differentiates itself through the comprehensiveness of the issues it covers and the depth of its analysis, providing sharper insights… Read More.
UPSE-PCED Friday Seminars – 15 May 2026
ABSTRACT Market design started with the famous work of Gale and Shapley (1962) and has reshaped various markets such as school choice, kidney exchange, and college admissions. More recently, distributional policies such as affirmative action have become a central focus of the literature. In this lecture, I give an overview… Read More.
UPSE-PCED Friday Seminars – 12 May 2026
ABSTRACT This paper explores the potential impacts of the physical risks associated with climate change on bank indicators in the Philippines using an innovative provincial longitudinal data from 2012 to 2024, which was constructed using a myriad of government datasets. The results, which suggest non-linear and heterogeneous effects of climate-induced… Read More.
UPSE-PCED Friday Seminars – 8 May 2026
ABSTRACT I use event-level data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) to estimate the impact of Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs'' on political violence in the Philippines. Constructing a balanced panel of 80 provinces observed weekly from January 2016 through June 2017, I estimate event-study and… Read More.
New Faculty Publication – Illuminating the land: the effects of nighttime lights on land values in the Philippines
Abstract Our paper explores the informative power of artificial brightness, derived from meteorological satellites, in determining land values at the city-level from 1997 to 2012 in the Philippines. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to do so, thereby, contributing to the literature and to the… Read More.
New Faculty Publication – Do Global Value Chains Weaken Export Elasticities? Evidence from Time-Varying Coefficient Regressions
Abstract This study examines the time-varying impact of global value chains (GVCs) on the exchange rate elasticities of merchandise exports using a panel of 124 countries from 1995 to 2018. The time-varying coefficient (TVC) regressions reveal that export elasticities progressively weakened from the 1990s to the early 2010s, which coincided… Read More.
UPSE-PCED Advisory – April 2026
UPSE Policy Note – March 2026
Abstract This policy note asks whether suspending fuel excise taxes is a well-targeted way to protect poor households from rising oil prices. Using the 2023 Family Income and Expenditure Survey, I show that a blanket suspension is poorly targeted: the bottom 30 percent of households capture only 17 percent of… Read More.
New Faculty Publication – Inequality in prevalence of unmedicated hypertension or diabetes among older Filipinos: analysis of nationally representative survey data
Abstract Background Public clinics in the Philippines provide free anti-hypertensive and anti-diabetic medications, removing the price barrier to accessing effective treatments. We aimed to assess whether this is sufficient to eliminate inequality in prevalence of unmedicated hypertension (HTN) or diabetes (DM) among older Filipinos diagnosed with either condition. Methods We… Read More.
