Firm entry and exit play a crucial role in spurring a reallocation of resources across firms as tariffs are reduced. In the light of the substantial trade reforms implemented in the Philippines over the last two decades, the paper examines the impact of trade reforms on the exit of domestic...

We show that the most important barriers to investment and growth in the Philippines are structural and institutional problems that are characteristic of limited access societies, which can be more effectively and efficiently overcome by prioritizing 'first-order' market reforms that increase...

This paper examines the total factor productivity performance (TFP) of the Philippines in the 1990s in order to provide a picture of the extent of the productivity concern that needs to be addressed in the Medium-Term National Action Agenda for Productivity, 2000-2004. The findings show that...

There are three major developments in the area of foreign trade in 1990s: (a) the WTO-Uruguay Round agreement in 1995; (b) the AFTA agreement; and (c) the series of unilateral trade reform programs of the government. The paper attempts to make an impact assessment of these reforms during the period...

The paper examines the policies pursued by the Philippines in response to the increasing economic integration and interdependence of nations and regions around the world, focusing in particular on the country's multi-track approach to trade and investment liberalization. The country's experience...

The government has implemented substantial trade and investment policy reforms during the last two decades following a three-track approach involving unilateral, regional and multilateral modalities towards freer trade and investment. The reforms resulted to improvements in domestic resource...

Although justification for competition policies is well founded in the economic literature, there is a need to understand their implications more fully, brought about not just by what is happening in the global arena but even more importantly by various comprehensive policy reforms that have...

This paper uses a CGE mircosimulation approach to analyze the effects of tariff reduction on poverty and income inequality. The approach relaxes the representative household assumption in the traditional CGE modeling by replacing household groups with individual households. As such the approach...

Tariff reform, particularly tariff reduction, is one of the major economic reforms implemented in the last one and half decades in the Philippines. The paper attempts to analyze the effects of the tariff reduction from 1994 to 2000 on household income and welfare using a computable general...

The paper analyzes the possible effects of tariff reduction in the 1990s on unemployment, household income and household welfare using a computable general equilibrium model calibrated to the 1994 social accounting matrix. The series of simulation experiments indicate that tariff reduction is...