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Using the Philippines' first-ever nationally representative survey designed for characterizing digital commercial and noncommercial engagements, including ICT use, digital economy, and technology-enabled incidents, we investigate the presence of gendered disparities in online marketplaces. Doing this is consistent with the spirit of a gender and development approach that aims for equal and equitable outcomes between men and women. We verify whether the observed participation of women in online marketplaces results in higher online sales. To establish the determinants of participation and incomes in online marketplaces, we use a Heckman estimator in cognizance of the nonrandom choices people make when they enter online marketspaces. The negative selection indicates that those likely to sell have unobserved attributes negatively correlated with online income. Based on our model's income predictions, men outperform women in online sales. Men still hold the advantage, replicating a trend observed in traditional marketplaces. Results also highlight the importance of skills, digital awareness and habits, selling platforms, and ICT infrastructures. The paper also identifies potential initiatives for online marketplaces.

Platform work has the potential to help women reconcile the age-old conflict between unpaid work and market work. However, there is a degree of precariousness in platform work, one that is reminiscent of informal work. Concerns on whether platforms are new vehicles of delivering old inequalities are legitimate. This paper analyzes the issues in this emerging type of work to prevent the widening and deepening of existing inequalities, to ensure decent work in platform work, and to ensure that the work is inclusive and sustainable. It looks at the experience of Filipinos in crowdwork, a platform work that poses challenges in the enforcement of national labor laws as transactions are typically cross borders. The study finds, among others, that: (1) women are more likely to participate in platform work due to considerations of income, housework, and care economy; (2) platform work is done alongside nonplatform work; (3) past experience on the platform is an important factor in the workers' current platform involvement; (4) the time spent on platform work peaks at minimal care work; (5) there is no gendered difference in the compensation per hour once personal and platform attributes are controlled for; and (6) the compensation per hour received by the respondents is at par with the rate of platforms known for outsourcing routine tasks (microtasks). The study also provides key takeaways to initiate conversations on national programs and initiatives that ensure sustainable and decent work on platforms.

The world of work is constantly evolving because jobs are created and destroyed, a process that is increasingly becoming conspicuous due to significant technological advances, notably in ICT and computing. Invariably, poor national skills profiles hurt the economy, impede the efficient and timely accumulation of advanced or highly technical skills, and potentially degrade job mobility and wage growth. Thus, understanding the structure of the labor market in the context of occupational skills is essential. This paper provides a skills-based characterization of the labor market and assesses how skills are distributed across the working population, emphasizing key gender differences, and highlighting spatial disparities. It also explains the observed gender pay gap using skills-augmented Mincerian regression models and the 2015 Labor Force Survey. [...]

The emergence of digital labor platforms has broadened market work opportunities although certain segments of the population, such as women and those belonging to the younger generation may be naturally drawn to platform or online work. This has important implications on skill formation and human capital development especially in countries where online work is mostly found at the lower end of the value chain. In addition, this may result in the widening of coverage gaps of social protection and may cause social protection schemes to become unsustainable. This paper aims to investigate these issues in the context of making online work a sustainable form of work.

The landscape of life and work, once shaped by the advancements in ICT, is being disrupted once again due to the ongoing pandemic. As people adjust their attitudes towards risks and firms adjust their losses, platform work/online work, or work that is delivered and transacted online, is likely to become part of the new normal. This paper looks into some stylized patterns in online work in the Philippines within the bigger context of the Asian experience. This highlights some of the challenges that pertain to skills and social protection; and recommends ways to address these challenges.

Given new programs and policies in the Philippines, there is a need to formulate a macroeconometric model (MEM) to gain more insights on how the economy and its sectors are affected. This paper discusses the estimation of an annual MEM that will be used for policy analysis and forecasting with respect to the opportunities and challenges brought about by new developments. The formulation of an annual MEM is useful in assisting major macroeconomic stakeholders such as NEDA and the BSP in their conduct of policy simulations, macroeconomic surveillance, and economic analysis. Given this backdrop, PIDS and BSP have collaborated to estimate an annual MEM, which has four blocks, namely, the real sector, fiscal sector, trade sector, and monetary sector. Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model approach, these sectors are modeled separately although the linkages with each other are specified. These sectoral models are then put together and a test on the predictive accuracy of the forecast of the overall model is done. Some ways to further improve the annual MEM are provided.

Cognizant of the value and contribution, as well as of the challenges in the agricultural finance, the government has intensified its lending programs designed to help the agricultural sector, specifically, the smallholders. Thus, affordable and easy access retail lending has intensified in recent years. Despite these efforts, significant problems remain. These include the lack of markets and low prices, which have significant implications on the overall repayment capacity and credit rating of the small farmer and fisherfolk (SFF). Indeed, these lending programs are unlikely to become successful if financing and production are not viewed in the bigger context of a value chain financing. Thus, this paper looks into the SFF's financing ecosystem and provides recommendations on how the existing value chain financing can become more inclusive and sustainable.

This paper analyzes the prospects of the country's agricultural sector to evolve into a high value-added sector. In particular, the paper identifies the country's agricultural exports that have forward linkages to other high value-adding agricultural products. To do this, the study uses some metrics from the product space and maps the country's current agricultural exports to products that can be pursued in the short-, medium-, and long-run diversification strategies. This paper finds that the sophistication content of the Philippines' agricultural exports from 1994 to 2014 has not improved. Despite this, the country can diversify into processed agricultural goods, which have sophistication content relatively higher than that of primary agricultural products, such as fresh fruits. This indicates that developing the agro-processing industry appears to be a good strategy in harnessing the potential of the agricultural sector to contribute to sustainable economic growth and decent employment. While this portends good news, this also presents challenges on how the country's agricultural sector can transform into a high value-added sector. The transformation will definitely not happen overnight and deliberate steps toward the goal are necessary. To this end, the paper offers broad strategies that the country can pursue to realize the actual linkages of the agricultural sector to more advanced and sophisticated industries.

Current global trends show that boys have consistently underperformed in the academic front, an observation that can be noted in the Philippines as well. At the national level, a clear reversal of the gender schooling gap between men and women is evident. However, patterns also reveal that there are regions in which men have comparable schooling years with women. To make sense of these patterns, there is a need to cast the analysis of human capital accumulation within an intergenerational perspective. This paper adopts a cohort-based, regional perspective to trace the evolution of educational mobility among men and women. Results indicate substantial differences between sons and daughters, with daughters notably outperforming sons in terms of educational mobility and human capital accumulation. [...]

Despite the Philippines' sustained economic growth, persistently high malnutrition remains to be a significant issue in the country, especially in a number of subnational regions. This clearly illustrates the urgent need to examine the formulation and delivery of health and nutrition initiatives particularly for children in their first 1000 days at the local level. This integrative report draws together the key findings from the situation analyses concerning early childhood care and development (ECCD) for the first 1000 days (F1KD) of children in three UNICEF-KOICA areas namely Northern Samar, Western Samar and Zamboanga del Norte. The key objective is to examine the contextual factors that influence the delivery of ECCD-F1KD efforts in these areas. The discussion is partitioned into three key themes: policy and governance, the delivery ECCD-F1KD programs and services, and the nurturing care practices of parents and caregivers. The analyses implemented qualitative analysis of primary data gathered through interviews and focus group discussions with key stakeholders such as local chief executives, local planners and budgeting officers, program managers, frontline workers and parents/caregivers. This is supplemented by other documents that include data on health budgets and key nutrition indicators. The study found that access to and delivery of ECCD-F1KD programs and services is greatly affected by the following factors - lack of economic development/opportunities for most of the LGUs leading to low tax revenue base and poor capacity of many households to access such interventions; lack of integrated planning at the LGU level; lack of coordination in planning and budgeting; the absence of proper monitoring and evaluation; questionable quality of data coming from the OPT; lack of capacity of volunteer health workers; overburdened midwives; difficulty of reaching GIDAs due to security concerns and geographical barriers; and lack of awareness in some parents and even in local government leaders/officials, among others.

This report examines the context, practices, and strategies in selected KOICA municipalities in Northern Samar. Using the Nurturing Care Framework, it analyzes how these LGUs implement and govern ECCD-F1KD initiatives. It also analyzes the factors and processes that influence the implementation and delivery of, and access to ECCD-F1KD services, and provides recommendations on strategies and related interventions for the ECCD-F1KD Program. To do these, this report conducts a situation analysis of nutrition and health outcomes and provides recommendations on three elements, namely, enabling environment, supply, and demand.

While the Philippines has a long history of trade liberalization efforts and market-oriented reforms, the country has to yet to see a genuine structural transformation. Recently, there are efforts to transform the manufacturing industry into a globally competitive industry supported by backward and forward linkages to create decent jobs and promote sustainable and comprehensive growth. Given these, it is imperative for the country to chart its short-, medium-, and long-run diversification strategies. This research assesses the sophistication content of the country's current export portfolio and identifies products that result in a more diversified and high-value added mix of export commodities. Using some metrics from the product space, the paper finds that the average sophistication of products included in the country's export basket has barely improved from 1995 to 2014 and it has remained lower than the average sophistication content of exports in the world market. The paper also finds that some of the products in the country's existing export basket has potential forward linkages to goods with relatively higher sophistication content, which in turn has potential linkages to even more sophisticated goods. However, transformation does not happen overnight and requires well-thought-out policies, plans, and priorities. To this end, the paper advocates the implementation of measures outlined in the Philippine Export Development Plan. It also identifies other potential actions towards human capital development, innovations, and infrastructure programs.

While the Philippines has achieved several milestones advancing gender equality in the country, there are some areas that can still benefit from further government interventions. One such area pertains to the moderate female participation in the labor market, which hardly improved in the last 26 years. The lackluster participation of women in the labor market presents a continuing concern, and this is amply reflected in Philippine Development Plans and laws designed to support working women. However, other important factors remain to be addressed, and this paper looks into the role of women's housework. The paper also discusses the role of housework on men's market work. Doing so provides a holistic perspective and hence, a better narrative to ensure that both men and women equally benefit from development. Results indicate that housework affects both men and women's participation in market work. However, the study finds a bigger increase in women's market work participation when they do not engage in non-market work and a bigger decrease when their spouses do not share in the household production.

In 2016, the National Economic and Development Authority launched the AmBisyon Natin 2040, which embodies the long-term aspirations of Filipinos for themselves and for the country. At the heart of these aspirations is the idea of social mobility or the movements of entities from lower socioeconomic status to higher socioeconomic outcomes. To some extent, these aspirations reflect a high degree of optimism given that the country has experienced economic growth since 2011. However, issues on poverty and inequality of opportunities remain and these can potentially derail the attainment of these aspirations. Given these, it is imperative to understand social mobility and its drivers. To this end, this paper provides the rationale behind the development of a research agenda on social mobility and reviews materials that can help in quantifying distributional changes and in identifying processes or mechanisms that affect mobility. It also identifies available datasets and existing studies in the Philippines that can be used to enrich the state of social mobility research in the country. Doing so will help policymakers figure out a system of programs or interventions needed to facilitate and sustain upward mobility and at the same time, address issues such as in-work poverty and inequality.

Weather is an integral part of our life and weather shocks can have severe implications on welfare. Given the evidence that points to climate change resulting in altered patterns of weather parameters and given that the Philippines is one of the most vulnerable countries to climatic shifts, this paper aims to contribute to poverty studies in the Philippines by analyzing the poverty-rainfall shock nexus. The paper finds that rainfall shocks affect wages and income, which in turn, affect chronic total and chronic food poverty. Given that LGUs are in the forefront of the country's fight against the adverse effects of climate change, some policy directions are forwarded so that LGUs can better address issues on climate change. These include the development of climate-smart agriculture and the tapping of additional funding sources for projects on climate change adaptation. Partly due to exclusion errors, there are deserving households that are not part of the 4Ps. Suggestions are forwarded not only to improve the 4Ps' data management to accommodate vertical scale-up but to ensure that the program covers deserving beneficiaries as well. Policy directions on the development of adaptive social protection are also forwarded.

This scoping paper aims to present a summary of the past and present macroeconometric models of the Philippine economy. This paper looks at the various approaches and methodology used in modelling the economy. The various approaches were compared and contrasted in order to find the best possible way to model the Philippine economy. The strengths and the criticism of each model is also highlighted. In particular, the Cowles Commission Approach, the LSE Approach, and the General Equilibrium method was discussed and evaluated. From the literature review, it appears that there is a need for a new model for the Philippines considering only one model is actively being used for policy simulations. The development of a new macroeconomic model is also consistent with the needs of the major macroeconomic policy making bodies of the State (NEDA, BSP, etc.) to conduct macroeconomic surveillance, analysis and policy simulations. [...]

Innovation is the synergistic use of resources, technology, capital, and information to achieve growth at different levels of the economy. Many studies abroad have already supported the hypothesis that innovation leads to a good firm performance and long-term economic growth. In the Philippines, some studies already analyzed the effects of simple innovations on firm performance. However, emerging literature shows that complex innovation strategies have bigger impacts than simple ones. This paper analyzes the effects of simple and complex innovations on labor productivity and employment growth. Results show that there is no single best innovation strategy that a firm must undertake. However, if firms are constrained by their budget, a simple innovation will help in improving labor productivity and, to some extent, employment growth. Firms that do not face cost issues can benefit more from adopting a complex innovation strategy. In addition, several specific types of complex innovation strategies can be adapted depending on whether the firm aims to increase its employment or to boost its labor productivity.

Weather is an integral part of our life and weather shocks can have severe implications on income and household consumption. Given evidence that points to altered patterns of weather parameters resulting from climate change, this paper aims to contribute to poverty studies in the Philippines by analyzing the effects of geographic attributes, like weather variability, on chronic and transient poverty. Based on the estimates of the generalized linear model, higher than normal rainfall contributes to a modest increase in chronic total and chronic food poverty in both urban and rural areas. In addition, asset ownership and college education have the most impact on the reduction of both types of poverty.

There are few studies in the Philippines that analyze poverty dynamics; and studies that analyze the effects of weather variability on food poverty dynamics are even fewer. Given that there are some sectors that are more adversely affected by the changing weather patterns, a study analyzing the effects of weather variability on poverty is essential. Using a simple spells approach to understand the food poverty dynamics in the Philippines, this paper finds that deviation of rainfall from its normal values and other key variables such as education, employment, assets, and armed conflict affect chronic food poverty. A discussion of some inputs to policies is provided.

Using a discrete/continuous modeling approach, this paper analyzes energy use and consumption in the Philippines within the context of weather variability and gender. Consistent with energy stacking strategy where households use a combination of traditional and modern energy sources, this paper finds that households use multiple energy sources in different weather fluctuation scenarios. It also finds that weather variability has the highest effects on the electricity consumption of balanced and female-majority households that are female headed and in rural areas. Several policies are suggested.

The literature on the finance-growth nexus highlights the importance of the financial cycle for the estimation of potential output of an economy. We estimate potential output growth for the G-5 countries, as well as for 10 high- and middle-income Asian economies, using a multivariate model that includes financial factors. We find that the latter have a positive and statistically significant effect on the output gap of the G-5 and high-income Asian economies, but not on that of the middle-income Asian economies. We also find that average potential growth of the economies included in the study is lower in 2008-2014 than in 2000-2007.

This research aims to examine the sophistication of export portfolios of selected ASEAN and developed Asian economies. It aims to provide evidence on where exactly the ASEAN economies are in the context of exports sophistication and structural transformation. Results from the product space analysis indicate that although limited in product scope, there are prospects for ASEAN economies to converge to the level of the export sophistication of the developed Asian countries.

Using panel data, this paper attempts to analyze the chronic and transient poverty in the Philippines. Results indicate that chronic poverty is the more substantial portion of the Philippine poverty with rural households and households in the Mindanao region as the more afflicted areas. This paper finds that both chronic and transient poverty are affected by negative shocks but negative labor market shocks affect chronic poverty while natural disasters affect transient poverty. Results also indicate that the number of dependent children positively affects chronic poverty but not transient poverty. Policies to lower both types of poverty in the Philippine context are suggested.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of women’s participation in the decisions made in the household by looking at the effects of events that transpired in the recent period. Results suggest that the wife’s participation status is positively affected by the presence of parents, either hers or the spouse’, in the household. Results also show that the wife’s parents significantly affect participation in minor issues while the spouse’s parents significantly affect the more relevant financial issues. The paper also offers a cursory discussion on the role of household headship.