This Policy Brief discusses the proposed amendments to Republic Act No. 7653 (RA 7653). The first part briefly presents the mandate of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). It then describes the financial sector’s challenges that necessitate the amendment of the said law. The salient...

The paper reviews India’s macroeconomic performance and policies since 2000. The first section briefly summarizes key macroeconomic developments regarding economic growth, inflation, external balance, the fiscal situation and aggregate savings and investment. The second section considers...

The ambitious development plans for the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB) could have serious environmental, social, cultural and even geopolitical ramifications that could in turn destabilise the Mekong Subregion (MS). On the premise that frameworks for regional cooperation offer a viable route...

In this context, higher education as well as research and development (R&D) have long since ceased to be purely the domain of the developed Western economies. Numerous regions of the world, some in the emerging markets in particular – the often-cited BRIC countries – are catching...

This paper develops an index for measuring the economic power of governments viewed as entities in themselves. The basic idea is to encapsulate the economic representative power of a nation’s government in the international arena in as simple and parsimonious a manner as possible. For...

This policy review is set in the context of a highly uncertain global environment and a delicately poised domestic balance between growth and inflation. It should be read and understood together with the detailed review in Macroeconomic and Monetary Developments released yesterday by the Reserve...

Measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal 6, including estimates of, and time trends in, the number of malaria cases, has relied on risk maps constructed from surveys of parasite prevalence, and on routine case reports compiled by health ministries. A critique of both methods are...