The population issue - now passé elsewhere in the developing world, even in the poorer countries - remains a durable puzzle in the Philippines. On the one hand, a majority of Filipinos regard rapid population growth as an impediment to socioeconomic development, requiring policy intervention;...

The relationship between population growth and economic outcomes is an issue of great policy significance. In the era of the Millennium Development Goals, poverty and its correlates have become the compelling issues. Economic growth may not automatically translate into reductions in poverty and...

The socio-economic situation of small banana growers generated a lot of issues among researchers. However, the situation drastically changed because land distribution became possible through the Collective Certificate of Land Ownership (CLOA) issuance under the CARP. CLOA is issued to...

Recent work has documented industrial output growth around the poor periphery from 1870 to the present, finding unconditional convergence on the leaders long before the modern BRICS and even before the Asian Tigers. The Philippines was very much part of that catching up. In the decade or so up...

Cesar Virata's tenure as secretary/minister of Finance is the longest held by any head of department in Philippine history. This study reviews his contributions to the evolution and reform of the Philippine tax system which were significant, sustained and consistent. His contributions helped to...

This paper presents new evidence on the role of subsidized contraceptives in influencing fertility behavior. It draws on two types of disruptions that affected the public supply of free contraceptives in the Philippines: a sharp reduction induced by the phase out of contraceptive donations to...

Documentary evidence of the emergence and the eventual complete dominance of the Chinese mercantile traders (Sangleys) during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines is first presented. We identify the critical traits in the Sangley mercantile genome and the new contractual and...

We investigate the effects of two accountability measures on the decisions of the local governments under decentralization. Using a panel of Philippine municipalities and cities in three election years, we find that term limits have negative but weak effects on the provision of health insurance...

The paper tries to explain why women in the Philippines, as yet a low middle income country, obtain higher levels of education than boys. Four empirically based reasons are posited - the substantial expansion of the education system, the growth of job opportunities, the culture that encourages...

A lack of maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) equity analysis in recent years has led to a substantive gap in the literature. Responding to this, we use the best available country data and the most advanced methods to investigate the levels and distribution of, and the trends in, both MNCH...