This Selected Issues paper for the Philippines has been prepared by a staff team of the International Monetary Fund as background documentation for the periodic consultation with the member country. Spillovers have been particularly prominent for countries with financial systems with high...

The staff report for the Post-Program Monitoring highlights economic developments, fiscal policy, and monetary policy. The primary risk to the near-term outlook for the Philippine economy is that the prevailing state of uncertainty proves to be protracted and sidelines economic reforms. Adverse...

The 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis exposed serious deficiencies in the insolvency systems of many countries. In response, many governments have undertaken sweeping reforms to strengthen their insolvency systems and rebuild their economies, including promulgating new laws, introducing new...

Water is critical not only to economic progress and sustainable development but most importantly, to human survival. Yet, the way water is valued suggests an inexhaustible supply, when the opposite is true. This paper examines if water rights in the Philippines are underpriced and looks at how...

This paper attempts to review the Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) phenomenon through selected aspects of it - past and present trends, structural issues, and development context. While the OFW system appears to be beneficial to the county, it is overrated. It is unclear what policies were really...

We delineate metropolitan areas (MAs) in the Philippines using cellphone user flow data to proxy for daily commutes. The exercise identifies a number of large MAs that are not officially recognized, and different spatial extents for the three officially designated MAs. The urban system aligns...