The Philippines has been more cautious in its policy toward free trade agreements (FTAs) than other ASEAN member-states, having signed, so far, only one bilateral agreement with Japan in addition to the various ASEAN+1 agreements. While the government is expected to progressively reduce...

The recent spate of banking and currency crises has underscored the need to develop early warning systems. These are based on economic indicators of vulnerability, which can be identified from models and theories of crises. First generation models focus on the inconsistency of macroeconomic...

The output gap is the difference between the economy’s actual output and potential output, with the latter being the level of production consistent with existing labor, capital and technology. There are several key issues surrounding the output gap in the context of inflation-targeting. One is...

Intraregional trade and investment among the ASEAN+3 countries—and the entire East Asia—has been progressing at a robust pace over the past 25 years. The process of economic integration could be aptly described as “regionalization” or market-driven integration. In contrast, the European...

Regional economic integration in East Asia has gained momentum in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis and the escalation of international terrorism. In the first essay, the integration process in Europe and East Asia is compared briefly. This is followed by a discussion on the expansion...

The recent spate of banking and currency crises has underscored the need to develop early warning systems. These are based on economic indicators of vulnerability, which can be identified from models and theories of crises. First generation models focus on the inconsistency of macroeconomic...

Striking a balance between trade facilitation and preventing trade deflection is the single most difficult challenge with regard to the issue of rules of origin (ROO). ASEAN ROO is already considered as among the simplest in the world and still, in practice, results fall short of expectations....

The strong recovery of the five crisis-affected countries of East Asia between 1999 and 2000 has revived the debate on the causes of the 1997 financial crisis. Initially there had been an emerging consensus that the crisis had originated from the capital account. However, some analysts see the...

While previous studies utilizing P* indicates that the model is better applicable with large countries, the paper argues that the Philippine case should include a foreign gap price. Further work should also focus on estimating more appropriate values of Q* and V*.

The Ramos administration has inherited an economy that is in a state of recession. Despite this discouraging condition, this paper argues that this need not dishearten policymakers. Instead, they should take advantage of the stabilized Philippine macroeconomic conditions. The best way to do this...