Green and Gold: Promoting Eco-Adventure and Cultural Tourism for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth

This paper briefly reviews the literature on the emerging concept of eco-adventure and cultural tourism, dubbed "green and gold tourism," respectively. It provides the rationale for conducting such a study in the Philippines (why the concern for inclusivity and environmental sustainability in tourism). It then establishes the feasible scope of such study and lists illustrative activities of inclusive and sustainable green and gold tourism. It also identifies concerns and issues about green and gold tourism in APEC countries and in the Philippines. Finally, it classifies emerging good practices in this area, including volunteer travel, promotion of home stays, community-organized and -owned tourism activities, establishing nonmainstream tourist routes and destinations, and tourists' involvement in cultural preservation and eco-rehabilitation

Review of the Cheaper Medicines Program of the Philippines: Botika ng Barangay, Botika ng Bayan, P100 Treatment Pack, and the Role of PITC Pharma, Inc. in Government Drug Procurement

This report provides an assessment of the Department of Health's (DOH) three drug provision programs, i.e., Botika ng Barangay (BnB), Botika ng Bayan (BNB), and the P100 Treatment Pack (P100). (a) The BnB program expanded its distribution network rapidly in the past decade, contributing to improvement in market contestability. The BnBs showed that generic drug retailing can have modest profitability in rural areas, thus encouraging the private sector to enter the market aggressively, eventually outpricing some of the BnBs. In addition, while the number of BnBs has grown rapidly, not all of them have been provided with sufficient financial and management support to make them sustainable. DOH has taken cognizance of the problem and has instituted a moratorium on further BnB expansion until problems in restocking and financing are addressed. (b) BNBs are private franchises supported by the PITC Pharma Inc., a government parastatal. They are more sustainable than BnBs, but are facing aggressive competition from private franchisors which are able to offer better terms to their franchisees. (c) The P100 Treatment Pack operates on the principle of improving patient compliance to treatment through less expensive generic drug packs. Introduced in 2009, the program initially showed significant patient savings compared to private sector generic equivalents. The problem is its underfunding, poor reporting of sold items by participating hospitals, short drug list, and limited outlets. Since then, aggressive private sector generic retailers have entered the market offering similar treatment packs. The program is planned to be configured as a primary care pharmacy benefit under PhilHealth

Does fiscal decentralization improve health outcomes? - evidence from a cross-country analysis

Decentralization of fiscal responsibilities has emerged as a primary objective on the agendas of national governments, and international organizations alike. Yet there is little empirical evidence on the potential benefits of this intervention. The authors fill in some quantitative evidence. Using panel data on infant mortality rates, GDP per capita, and the share of public expenditures managed by local governments, they find greater fiscal decentralization is consistently associated with lower mortality rates. The results suggest that the benefits of fiscal decentralization are particularly important for poor countries. They suggest also that the positive effects of fiscal decentralization on infant mortality, are greater in institutional environments that promote political rights. Fiscal decentralization also appears to be a mechanism for improving health outcomes in environments with a high level of ethno-linguistic fractionalization, however, the benefits from fiscal decentralization tend to be smaller.National Governance,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Municipal Financial Management

Economic feasibility of organic farms and risk management strategies

Organic farmers must face different risks than conventional farmers Due to the special features of management of their productive system, and due to the specific characteristics of their cultivations. This study analyses the specific risks that organic farmers must manage as well as the different strategies that there are developing nowadays. Even if the Spanish farmers rely on the insurance system to manage their risks, today organic farmers do not have specific insurance products to manage them. The methodology and results presented in this study include a risk analysis carried out by evaluating statistical, probabilistic, and stochastic properties of the organic production data. We evaluate and discuss the aspects of our study that relate to other international studies. Productions considered in this research are olives, vineyard and cereals. Specific risk management strategies developed by organic farmers – in contrast with conventional farmers – have been identified and quantified, showing the different attitudes based on their risk perception and the potential vulnerability of their farms. Agricultural insurance tool for organic farmers in Spain has been studied and analyzed as an important risk managemen

Health manpower employment and productivity in the Philippines

The study analyzes two of the major issues which emerged in health manpower planning and development exercises in the Philippines, namely, employment and productivity of specific categories of health manpower in the country's health delivery system. The first issue involves the critical questions of supply of, and needs or requirements for, specific health manpower in the country's health care delivery system. The second issue, meanwhile, emerged because of lack of certain types of health personnel as well as the rapid increase in the cost of medical care. These two issues evolved from the nagging concern over the maldistribution of health personnel and the existence of imbalances between what and how many of specific types of health manpower are needed and available in the country. The study covers only fourtypes of health professionals: physicians, nurses, midwives and dentists. This study is organized as follows. The next section discusses the supply of health manpower in the country. This includes a discussion of the estimates of actual supply as of 1987, their employment characteristics in terms of employment settings and their regional distribution. An attempt to forecast the supply of health manpower up to the year 2000 is made. The study also examines the factors which influence the location decisions of these health workers. Additional issues on supply such as production, utilization and migration are also discussed. The third section focuses on the needs of health manpower with a discussion on how to estimate or project the needs or requirements of health manpower. The fourth section discusses estimation of the needs of health manpower using the different methodologies. These estimates are then compared with supply to identify shortages or surpluses. Adiscussion of demand for health manpower is presented in Section 5. Although no actual estimation of demand equations are made due to insufficient data, several conceptual and methodological issues are discussed. Section 6 presents various productivity issues. Finally, section 7 concludes the study with some policy recommendations

Medical Tourism in the Philippines: Market Profile, Benchmarking Exercise, and S.W.O.T. Analysis

This report reviews the medical tourism industry in the Philippines. It discusses the global market for medical tourism, analyzes the demand and supply aspects of the local industry, and identifies its drivers of growth. It performs an industry benchmarking exercise by looking at benchmarks associated with strategy setting, organization and management, service quality, care, travel and accommodation, and financing. It also conducts an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the industry

Wide-Field Multi-Parameter FLIM: Long-Term Minimal Invasive Observation of Proteins in Living Cells.

Time-domain Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) is a remarkable tool to monitor the dynamics of fluorophore-tagged protein domains inside living cells. We propose a Wide-Field Multi-Parameter FLIM method (WFMP-FLIM) aimed to monitor continuously living cells under minimum light intensity at a given illumination energy dose. A powerful data analysis technique applied to the WFMP-FLIM data sets allows to optimize the estimation accuracy of physical parameters at very low fluorescence signal levels approaching the lower bound theoretical limit. We demonstrate the efficiency of WFMP-FLIM by presenting two independent and relevant long-term experiments in cell biology: 1) FRET analysis of simultaneously recorded donor and acceptor fluorescence in living HeLa cells and 2) tracking of mitochondrial transport combined with fluorescence lifetime analysis in neuronal processes

People-to-People Tourism in APEC: Facilitating Cross-Border Entry and Exit, with Special Focus on ASEAN

This paper discusses the promotion of person-to person (PTP) tourism in the member-countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), focusing on the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). PTP can be defined as the cross-border movement of people from one country to another on a repeated basis for (a) educational, training, or related capacity building; (b) research and development (R&D) cooperation; (c) police, constabulary, military, security, or anti-crime assignments; (d) responding to health epidemics or outbreaks; (e) medical tourism; (f) responding to disaster or calamity; (g) management of environmental parks and natural resource assets; (h) local border traffic; and (i) other valid reasons that APEC countries will deem important. The paper situates PTP tourism in the context of intra-ASEAN and APEC tourism, discusses the rationale for increasing PTP tourism, and the current obstacles of doing this. It reviews recent international practices in promoting PTP tourism through entry and exit facilitation, identifying general as well as specific programs and policies in a number of innovating countries. The paper ends with recommendations to facilitate PTP tourism in ASEAN and APEC

Weakening political connections by means of regulatory reform: Evidence from contracting out water services in Spain

One area of public policy where rent-seeking and favoritism is relatively common is the contracting out of public services. Private firms can improve their chances of obtaining contracts by bribing politicians or public servants and funding political parties. In the same vein, firms can gain access to policymakers by hiring influential former politicians—a practice commonly referred to as revolving-doors. In this paper, we use information from 922 privatizations of water services in Spanish municipalities between 1984 and 2016 and multinomial logistic regression techniques to study the association between specific firms securing contracts and the political parties ruling the municipalities. We find robust statistical evidence of an association between the Popular Party (Partido Popular or PP) and the firm Aqualia, part of the large Spanish holding company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), which is known to have funded the Popular Party. Furthermore, former PP politicians have been appointed to top positions in the FCC Board of Directors. However, this relationship weakened after the institutional reform of 2007 on public procurement and financing of political parties, which is empirically evaluated in this paper