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ASIA now has several growing economies and it is assumed that Asia will be the centre of the global economy during the latter part of this century. But not all [...]

An evaluation of the effects of political corruption on economic development reveals that Zaire, South Korea and the Philippines were all affected differently. Corruption in Zaire gave way to the rise of an informal economy with the Philippines registering short-lived economic growth and South Korea sporting sustained, balanced economic growth. Political corruption in South Korea was able to sustain economic growth but not in Zaire and the Philippines for infrastructure was highly developed in Korea.

I. Introduction In international finance, the competing hypothesis that the logarithms of real exchange rates appear to be well-described as random walks during a period of floating rate, has found [...]

The debt-adjusted real exchange rate (DARER) is developed as an alternative to the real exchange rate (RER) or the required real effective exchange rate. This addresses the underestimation of currency overvaluations in a trade- or current-account deficit economy that accepts an influx of short-term capital and finances its deficit through foreign loans. To this end, the performance of the DARER and the RER in forecasting currency devaluations in the Philippines and Thailand were compared.

While its sacrifice of resource endowments is comparable to that of other developing countries, the Philippines does not have the strong record in capital accumulation and structural change of its Asian neighbors. A crisis-prone macroeconomy, traceable to a heavy dependence on volatile external finance and short-sighted macroeconomic management, explains the feeble rate of accumulation. Environmental losses can be traced both to extensive factors (economic and population growth) and intensive factors (unequal distribution and access to market resources). In the concluding section, this paper examines the feasibility of an alternative macroeconomic stance which invests in environmental regeneration and accepts a lower and steadier national economic growth rate.

Many less developed countries (LDCs) have implemented macroeconomic adjustment programs to hasten their march towards developed country status. However, the adjustment programs implemented by LDCs focus almost exclusively on promoting economic efficiency and fostering stable and sustainable economic growth, instead of addressing poverty and social concerns. This has led to sharp increases in poverty levels in LDCs. The implementation of a macroeconomic adjustment program in the Philippines is discussed.

A study on the relationship of intrahousehold inequality and household welfare indicated the need to expand food intake data to include energy expenditure information. Intrahousehold inequality was observed if it followed an inverse U-shape as average household well-being increased. The study made use of survey data of dietary intakes and energy expenditures of rural households in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon.

This study compares the work values of Filipino MBA students employed in smaller enterprises with those of MBA students employed in larger enterprises. It also compares and contrasts the work values of males and females employed in smaller enterprises. The 2 groups of smaller and larger enterprise respondents display differences in their preferences. The important differences between the 2 groups relate to the smaller enterprise-employed respondents' low ratings for stability and predictability in work, and to opportunities for promotion and advancement. Smaller enterprise-employed respondents mostly prefer work-rewards such as opportunities for personal advancement, recognition, and achievement. The major difference between smaller enterprise-employed males and females is in females' opposition to involvement in unfair or unethical practice. Females also prefer work offering equal opportunities more than did males., Acknowledgments The cooperation and assistance of the Dean and Faculty of De La Salle University Graduate School of Business and Economics in the conduct of this research program are gratefully [...]

This paper focuses on immiserizing growth in the two senses of Bhagwati (1958) and Johnson (1967), and how both the likelihood that either may occur and their extent can be affected by the presence of endogenous protection; i.e., quota and other forms of protection for which the ad valorem equivalent level of protection is endogenously determined. We use a general equilibrium model of the Philippines due to Clarete (1984) to compute counterfactual equilibria involving changes in domestic policies, terms of trade, and resource endowments. Immiserizing growth, in the sense of Bhagwati, is less likely because the terms-of-trade fall required to offset the growth of resources has to be significantly larger if no distortions are in the model. Immiserizing growth in the sense of Johnson tends to be more likely if endogenous protection is present. As unbalanced growth occurs focused on the factor intensive in the protected sector, resources are drawn out of the export sector and export earnings decline and, if the level of protection is endogenously determined, the welfare costs of protection increase. Keywords: Immiserizing growth; Trade policy

The rapid increase in investment and external debt of middle-income countries like the Philippines during the 1970s was perfectly 'rational' given existing policies. However, these countries could have done better with an appropriate mix of adjustment policies. Using a dynamic general equilibrium framework, the paper examines the sensitivity of investment and growth to external shocks and adjustment policies. It highlights the intertemporal trade-offs of tariff reform, a policy often recommended in the 1980s, emphasizing the need for complementary measures to ease macro imbalances and short-term dislocations of the protected sector. Key words: Dynamic general equilibrium model; Structural adjustment; Philippines

MANILA - Philippine President Fidel Ramos fears the future may be slipping away. The gap between the booming economies of the Asian tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore) [...]

Most measures of the real effective exchange rate (REER) do not capture the complex ways in which the structure and direction of trade adapt to changes in exchange rates. Conventional measures of the REER are based on the stringent assumptions that cross price elasticities with respect to exports of third party competitors are all zero and with respect to trading partners they are all equal. This paper develops an alternative index of competitiveness that captures the effects of a whole set of bilateral price changes by estimating an import demand system. A REER for the Philippines is computed and compared to a conventional REER.

Taiwan and the Philippines had many similarities after WWII, especially in agriculture, but they were quite dissimilar in the early 1990s. Authors argue that Taiwan used its formal rural financial market more effectively than did the Philippines and that this explains an important part of the superior economic performance in Taiwan. The Philippines used financial markets to handle targeted loans and subsidies while Taiwan mostly used these markets to support the efficient allocation of resources. The authors discuss 10 policies that help explain the superior performance of rural financial markets in Taiwan.

Agricultural growth in the Philippines has not sparked the economic growth nor solved rural poverty like the government had planned. The agricultural growth rate, although it started to decelerate in the 1980s, was sustained at about 3.9% per year from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s. The rate of rural poverty has dropped from 80% of the total population in 1961 to 54% in 1988 but because of the rapid growth in rural population, there is an increase in volume of the number of poor rural families. The agricultural sector of the country needs to address problems in 'productivity, landlessness and high underemployment.'

Land pawning contracts have increased in importance in Philippine rice growing villages, and this article examines the determinants of choice of pawning contracts and the observed loan size. The analysis shows that pawning is an informal credit instrument used by small farmers to obtain large loans to finance productive investments, such as non-farm employment, where the returns to investment are high. The econometric results suggest that poorer farm households pawn-out land, while wealthier farm households pawn-in. The observed loan size is explained by reputation of pawners and rice cropping intensity in the region.

The wide range of calorie-income elasticities in the literature results, in large part, from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation. Elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie-income variable pairs for a sample of Philippine farm households, ranged from 0.03 to 0.59. Estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards, first, because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted (by construction) both to calorie availability and total expenditures, and second, because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income. The calorie intake-total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0.08-0.14 range.

In recent decades the private citizen of a number of Third World countries accumulated substantial external assets via 'capital flight' at the same time their governments incurred large external debt. This paper proposes a classification of hypotherical linkages between capital flight and external debt disbursements, and examines the strength of these linkages in the Philippines during 1964-86. Econometric analyiss and anecdotal evidence indicate that large sums of capital flowed into and out f the Philippines through a financial revolving door. On this basis I conclude that there is scope for political and legal challenges to the legitimacy of a substantial fraction of the country's external debt.

Considerable comparative political development research has shown that there is a positive relationship between societies' levels of socio-economic development and their political development. Cutright (1963) formulated an explicitly equilibrium theory concerning this relationship. His data on 77 nations for the 1940-60 period showed that while most were 'in equilibrium' in that sense that their level of political party competition was what would be expected when this was regressed on their level of socio-economic development, a number of nations were extremely 'out of equilibrium'. Chile and the Philippines had been much more democratic than 'expected' on the basis of their relatively low level of socio-economic development, while Spain, Portugal and Saudi Arabia were the most extreme outliers in the opposite direction. Qualitative data from the political history of these five countries are examined to test equilibrium theoretic predictions. As predicted, Chile and Philippines moved toward greater equilibrium by becoming less democratic (more authoritarian) in the 1970s, while Spain and Portugal had transitions from dictatorships to democracy during the same decade. Only one of the five countries - Saudi Arabia - has (to date) remained in disequilibrium, contrary to the prediction.