This paper provides estimates of trade costs of the Philippines with her key trading partners, and develops a framework for assessing their welfare cost. With tariff restrictions reduced significantly following several rounds of multilateral and regional trade negotiations, non-tariff barriers...

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) transforms the ASEAN region into a single market and production base by 2015. This promotes greater competition for the Philippine agriculture and fisheries (A and F) sectors. With the country`s A and F sector lagging behind its neighboring ASEAN countries,...

In economies characterized by low labor demand and high rates of youth unemployment, entrepreneurship training has the potential to enable youth to gain skills and create their own jobs. This paper presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship track that provides business training and...

With food prices on the rise, understanding the transmission of price shocks, both internationally and domestically, is central for trade policy analysis. This paper examines spatial market integration and its determinants for ten key food products in Bolivia, across the four most important...

Deposit insurance is widely offered in a number of countries as part of a financial system safety net to promote stability. An unintended consequence of deposit insurance is the reduction in the incentive of depositors to monitor banks, which leads to excessive risk-taking. This paper examines...

This paper reassesses what works in banking regulation based on the new World Bank survey (Survey IV) of bank regulation and supervision around world. The paper briefly presents new and official survey information on bank regulations in more than 125 countries, makes comparisons with earlier...