Reaction of the Philippine stock market to domestic monetary policy surprises: an event study approach

This paper uses an event study analysis to assess how stock prices in the Philippines have reacted to domestic monetary-policy changes using data at a daily frequency from 2017 to 2022. A major contribution of this paper is the construction of a monetary-policy surprise measure for the Philippines, as the difference between the actual change in the monetary policy rate and the change anticipated by professional forecasters. My results are consistent with the literature, suggesting that unanticipated monetary policy changes exert a significant influence on stock prices in the Philippines. Overall, I find that an unexpected increase of 25 basis points in the monetary policy rate increases stock prices by about 1.09% on average. These results are robust to the inclusion of additional control variables in the baseline regression model, such as the implementation of restrictions to economic activity to curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak or revisions to macroeconomic forecasts released concomitantly with the monetary-policy rate announcement

Improving MSMEs’ access to start-up financing in ASEAN countries

Lack of access to finance constitutes a major setback to the development of the MSME sector in ASEAN countries. MSMEs are confronted with stringent funding constraints in traditional lending and capital markets, in particular at the early stages of their activity. Demand and supply of capital to MSMEs thus entails more complex issues compared to the larger firms. This paper presents a number of policy actions that have the potential to mitigate the financing challenges faced by MSMEs in ASEAN at the start-up stage by enhancing the potential of alternative funding sources such as business angel investment, crowdfunding, venture capital investment and SME stock markets