"Political dynasty" refers to the situation wherein members of the same family are occupying elected positions either in sequence for the same position, or simultaneously across different positions. In the Philippines, political dynasties are prevalent in areas with more severe poverty. Two...

The Easterlin Paradox—the perceived absence of a relationship between economic progress and happiness—is one of the most important continuing debates in economics. Yet, both sides of the extant debate are anchored on valid mathematical arguments. The preponderance of evidence is therefore...

Political dynasties—members of the same family occupying elected positions sequentially for the same position or simultaneously across different positions—have become a common feature in many developing countries with democratic political systems. In the Philippines, for instance, political...

The gap between the willingness to accept and willingness to pay is the outcome of incomplete valuation. The problem therefore is more about completing the valuation procedure. The first part of the solution involves two items: one is the inclusion of the direct and indirect income effects and...

Analysis of World Values Survey 2000 data for the Philippines finds that lower income Filipinos are more likely than the upper income ones to support inflation targeting. The same can be said of older, healthier, and employed Filipinos but not of the educated and financially satisfied ones....

The paper develops a Balance of Payments (BOP)-consistent procedure for estimating unreported flows. Using data between 1990 and 2007, total unreported flows of selected Asian countries is estimated at $4.7 trillion, or more than 80% of the countries’ 2007 total gross domestic product. Results...

The development of a reliable procedure for the aggregation of individual level happiness leads to a proper understanding of group level happiness. Such a procedure is indispensable for a more responsive public policy-making. However, individual self-reports on happiness must meet the dual...

This paper presents metrics to estimate the size of political dynasties in the 15th Congress of the Republic of the Philippines and analyze the relationship between political dynasty and socio-economic outcomes. Results show that political dynasties comprise 70 percent of jurisdiction-based...

Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and...