Funds Transfer Operations: Boon or Bane to the Viability of Rural Financial Intermediaries?

As far as the policies are concerned, the government has been successful in reversing the flow of loanable funds in favor of rural areas through maintenance of agricultural loan quota and deposit retention policies. This paper examines the structure of funds transfer operations of rural-based branches of banks, the factors that determine the volume of transferred funds from one branch to another and the impact of funds transfer operations on the savings mobilization efforts of rural-based financial intermediaries.banking system, rural sector, deposit liabilities, financial intermediaries, funds transfer

Asymmetric Prices: Implications on Trader’s Market Power in Philippine Rice

Contrary to the commonly held notion that the market power exercised by a handful of unscrupulous traders in the local market has resulted unnecessary hike in prices, this paper presents evidence against this allegation. Findings show that market shocks originate at the farm level that are transmitted as price changes at the wholesale market before it is reflected at the retail market. In addition, symmetry test cannot confirm the presence of market power among Filipino traders. Nevertheless, estimation of price symmetry model does not lend credence to the claim that government’s absence in the market can lead to chaos.price level

OnionNet: Sharing Features in Cascaded Deep Classifiers

The focus of our work is speeding up evaluation of deep neural networks in retrieval scenarios, where conventional architectures may spend too much time on negative examples. We propose to replace a monolithic network with our novel cascade of feature-sharing deep classifiers, called OnionNet, where subsequent stages may add both new layers as well as new feature channels to the previous ones. Importantly, intermediate feature maps are shared among classifiers, preventing them from the necessity of being recomputed. To accomplish this, the model is trained end-to-end in a principled way under a joint loss. We validate our approach in theory and on a synthetic benchmark. As a result demonstrated in three applications (patch matching, object detection, and image retrieval), our cascade can operate significantly faster than both monolithic networks and traditional cascades without sharing at the cost of marginal decrease in precision.Comment: Accepted to BMVC 201

National Accounts Data Linkages

This article is part of the NEDA-PIDS Seminar-Workshop on the Philippine System of National Accounts. It discusses data linkages, especially those that are related to improvements in national account (NA) estimation methodology. It contains the following: the application of the flow account chart to Philippine NA data, the uses of different accounting models to improve estimation methodology and the reasons for improving the Philippine statistical system.data and statistics, national account

The Economics of Secondhand Retail Trade: An Analysis of the Market for Ukay-ukay

In recent years, the market for secondhand garments has flourished from its considered capital, Baguio City, province of Benguet. It is clear that people see this market as an alternative to counterpart goods burdened with soaring prices; however, with the invocation of laws that prohibit importation and sale of secondhand garments, consumers of such commodity have different reactions and suggest alternative solutions so as not to be affected negatively (in terms of the economic dimensions of their lives). This paper tries to look at these issues by quantifying consumer surplus in this market and estimating the market demand. Such will then give some overview of the dynamics of such commodities' consumers and suppliers.retail market, secondhand retail market, ukay-ukay, consumer surplus

Financial Liberalization: What Have We Learnt?

This article attempts to study the Philippine experience with financial liberalization. In particular, it examines the impact of interest rate reforms on the flow of loanable funds in the organized financial market.central bank, financial sector, financial reform, financial liberalization, financial services

Indirect Tax Reform in the Philippines: A Complementary Measure to the Tariff Reform Program, 1979-1985

This study analyzes the effect of the interaction between domestic indirect taxes and tariff system to the market of particular goods. Computation of effective protection rates is provided and the implications of alternative indirect tax schemes are examined.tariff, tax structure, effective protection rate, taxation

Decentralization of Governance and Financing of Public Roads in the Philippines in the 1990s

A major theoretical as well as political approach to transport infrastructure investment and management is the idea that such services are public goods and should not be subject to private market considerations. However, from time to time, public provision seems to fail, which increases the importance of various forms of private sector participation. Assessing the impact of devolution on the country's road infrastructure, the author underscores the lack of coherence in the design and redistribution of resources and responsibilities, which resulted in a coordination gap between national government agencies and local government units. An important insight is that the private provision of a public good may be feasible, for as long as its consumer-beneficiaries can be made to pay a use price, such that the revenue stream to the private provider is greater than the cost of construction, administration, and upkeep of the public good.infrastructure, devolution, decentralization, private sector participation, local government code, road network, road infrastructure, decentralized governance