"Indonesia has an impressive record of economic growth and poverty reduction over the past two decades. The growth-poverty nexus appears strong at the aggregate level. Newly constructed panel data on the country's 285 districts (kotamadyas/kabupatens), however, reveal huge differences in poverty...

Following an earlier paper titled 'Population and Poverty: The Real Score' (UPSE Discussion Paper 0415, December 2004), the present paper was first issued in August 2008 as a contribution to the public debate on the population issue that never seemed to die in this country. The debate heated up...

"Recent research employing cross-national regressions shows that the incomes of the poor move one-for-one with overall average incomes, suggesting that economic growth is virtually sufficient for poverty reduction. This paper attempts to probe beneath cross-country averages by analyzing...

This paper takes a fresh look, from a macro perspective, at the issue of aid effectiveness. An important point of departure for this study is that it adopts poverty reduction, as contrasted from economic growth, as the metric for measuring aid effectiveness. In conducting the empirical...

Anecdotal evidence permeates accounts on the impact of the global economic crisis (GEC) on Philippine poverty. This study systematically assesses the evidence and recent data. It adopts a somewhat eclectic approach, applying regression and decomposition techniques to trace the GEC impact on GDP...

Time was when solar energy was facilely dismissed as impractical, inefficient, and pricey. In recent years, however, innovations in technology, regulation, and financing have resulted in remarkable efficiency improvements and price reductions, thereby reversing the skepticism about this...

This paper looks into whether and how sub-national regions can benefit from a country's economic openness. Using data on the Philippines, it first notes marked disparities across its regions as reflected in economic and social indicators. The dominance of Metropolitan Manila in the national...

The paper reviews the continuing debate on the interrelationships between population growth and economic development with particular attention to its relevance to Philippine socioeconomic development. The aim is to put the development history of the country in perspective so that a stronger...

This paper examines the Philippines' investment climate in its many dimensions, relating these to the performance of the economy at the national, regional, and provincial levels. The central thesis is that the economy's slow growth over the past two decades or more can be attributed in large...

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;...