The recent currency and financial turmoil in East Asia have led to the evaluation of current financial and macroeconomic policies. The Philippines, which has been the worst hit in the 1980 economic crisis has indicated greater resilience in the 1990 financial crisis. Experts have attributed this...

This paper has re-examined the role of Land Bank of the Philippines, a government-owned bank, in light of the recent reforms and developments in the Philippine financial markets. It recommends that the Land Bank should shed off its commercial and investment functions, which can very well be done...

There is a good reason to justify the support for small and microenterprise development. At this point, what is more important is the formulation of research agenda that will facilitate the introduction of new insights into the sector’s development. This paper provides a background to the...

Very little has been written about the informal credit markets (ICMs) despite their prevalence in the economies of LDCs. This is probably due to the imported economic theories applied to LDCs. Such theories assume that the features in advanced economies are present in LDCs. Consequently, the...

Despite the pawnshop’s recently gained popularity as an alternative source of credit, very little study has been accorded to it. To date, there is hardly any thorough study about it. This paper is an attempt to bridge that gap. It analyzes the role of pawnshops in the financial system with...

How are interest rates determined in an open economy after financial liberalization has taken place? This is the main question that this paper attempts to answer. Utilizing a model adopted from Edwards and Khan, the author explains how interest rates are determined by both domestic monetary...

The monetary approach to the balance of payments (BOP) takes the view that domestic credit is exogenous to BOP and that it is deteriorated by the excess money, which results from domestic credit expansion. This article determines whether in fact the assertion is true. Utilizing the method...

Credit provision for small and poor households has always been the major element of nongovernment organizations in alleviating poverty. Recently, there has been a move to replicate the Bangladesh Grameen Bank in the Philippines known as Landless People’s Development Fund. This paper assesses...

Early 1980s has seen series of reforms in the Philippine financial system having improved financial intermediation as the general objective. This paper reviews the pace and effectiveness of the reforms implemented by the government. Findings show that economic instability and the ineffective...

A subset of the informal financial institutions that has been recently used as lending conduits of special credit programs is the credit union system. However, they often face some resource constraints which prevent them from satisfying the credit demands of their members on time. Access to...