The recent trade and productivity literature shows that trade liberalization can lead to productivity gains through increased competition and exit of inefficient firms and reallocation of market shares in favor of more efficient firms. In this paper, an attempt is made to examine the impact of...

The Rice Liberalization Act (RA 11203), signed last February 2019, reverses decades-long placing quantitative restrictions on rice importation administered by the National Food Authority. The Act goes further by dismantling interventionist policy in the rice industry by divesting the Authority...

This paper is part of the Philippine study for the ERIA project on the Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint. A milestone in ASEAN economic cooperation is the Cebu Declaration on the Acceleration of the Establishment of an ASEAN Community by 2015 during the 12th...

The paper aims to review our trade liberalization policy and its contribution to the country's industrial growth and performance. After more than twenty years of liberalization, the overall performance of the manufacturing industry has been weak, growth has been slow, and contribution to value...

The paper aims to examine how trade liberalization affects wage premium at the firm level. Using effective protection rate as trade proxy, the paper assumes that in the face of increasing competition, an import-substituting firm may decide to remain at the low value-added stage of the production...

The paper evaluates the feasibility of sectoral liberalization of environmental goods for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Using the model originally developed by Wonnacott, it argues for the liberalization of goods predominantly supplied by APEC members, thereby minimizing the free...

Much progress has been made in pursuing liberalization of agricultural trade in the Philippines. However, some significant tariff and non-tariff barriers remain. This study evaluates the economic impacts of completing the agenda of policy reform by removal of these remaining trade barriers....

Tariffication of quantitative restrictions on rice imports was a key policy reform of the Duterte administration. This study reviews recent trends in the rice market, and assesses the poverty and distributional effects of rice tariffication using a computable general equilibrium model with...

Amidst the signing of various trade agreements defining trade rules and commitments for economies globally, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) both emerged as the largest and latest of them....