Despite the continuing threat of the COVID-19 virus mutating, the pandemic will eventually end given widespread vaccination and virus suppression policies. Policymakers need to think ahead, assess scenarios of possible futures, and start to reset and rebuild toward a better Philippines in the...

This common country assessment update for the Philippines underpins the sustainable development partnership framework for the Philippines and the United Nations (UN). Taking off from the analysis of the national baseline on sustainable development goals (SDGs) and progress in the SDGs, this...

The Philippines entered its deepest recession in post-war history in 2020, with output declining by 9.6 percent. Coming up with a strategy on how to best manage the economy and deal with the fallout of the public health shock, especially on the weaker segments of society, became the biggest...

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Philippine labor market, focusing on employment and real wages and their respective outcomes across sectors and various worker characteristics. To analyze the pandemic's impacts on employment outcomes at various stages of the crisis,...

This paper examines whether the current level of debt in the country, given the national government's fiscal policy and plans, remains on a sustainable path. By end-2021, a year after the peak of the public health and economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's...

The COVID-19 crisis created conditions for digital finance to accelerate financial inclusion in the Philippines. Anecdotal and survey data suggest that the pandemic has indeed spurred large gains in financial inclusion in the country, with adoption of digital finance as a strong driver. This...

While the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on the Philippine economy have been widely chronicled, there has not been an effort at an ex-post quantification of the pandemic's impacts using counterfactual analysis. This paper aims to fill this gap. Using a modified version of the PIDS small...