Providing protection against the financial risk of high out-of-pocket health spending is one of the main goals of the Philippines’ health strategy. Yet, as this paper shows using eight household surveys, health spending increased by 150 percent (real) from 2000 to 2012, with the sharpest...

The authors use an original panel dataset of migrant departures from the Philippines to identify the responsiveness of migrant numbers and wages to gross domestic product shocks in destination countries. They find a large significant elasticity of migrant numbers to gross domestic product shocks...

The economy of the Philippines is open to trade and capital inflows, and has grown rapidly since 2002. Over the last 10 years, however, domestic investment, while stagnant in real terms, has shrunk as a share of GDP. In an open and growing economy, why the decline? Three reasons explain the...

Tobacco use, which is rising quickly in developing countries, kills 5.4 million people a year worldwide. This paper explores the impacts of mobile phone ownership on tobacco consumption. Indeed, mobile phone ownership could affect tobacco consumption because individuals might pay for their...

This paper explores the social capital impacts of a large-scale, community-driven development project in the Philippines in which communities competed for block grants for infrastructure investment. The analysis uses a unique data set of about 2,100 households collected before the project...

The authors explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 rural communities of the Philippines, the paper shows that where transaction costs are reduced (proxied by road construction), there is an increase in generalized...

Irrigation management transfer is an important strategy among donors and governments to strengthen farmer control over water and irrigation infrastructure. This study seeks to understand whether irrigation management transfer is meeting the promise of its commitments. The authors use data from a...

More attention and resources have been devoted in recent years to early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries. Rigorous studies on the effectiveness of ECD-related programs for improving children's development in various dimensions in the developing world are scant. The...

Group liability is often portrayed as the key innovation that led to the explosion of the microcredit movement, which started with the Grameen Bank in the 1970s and continues on today with hundreds of institutions around the world. Group lending claims to improve repayment rates and lower...

Since the early 1980s the Philippines has undertaken substantial trade reform. The current Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations is now likely to bring further reform and shocks to world import prices and export demand. The impact of all these developments on the poor is not...