This paper compares trends in key economic, political and social development outcomes in the Philippines with those of Latin America, particularly since the 1990s. To do so, it uses standard indicators of development, including measures of institutional quality and good governance. The paper...

One of the crucial areas of government policy responsible for the weak development performance of the Philippines is tax policy and administration. By 2011, the tax to GDP ratio had fallen to a meagre 12.3 per cent, 4.6 percentage points below the pre-1997 level and around 7 points below the...

This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of...

This paper provides evidence that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty. An increase of one standard deviation in corruption increases the Gini coefficient of income inequality by about 11 points and income growth of the poor by about 5 percentage points per year....