Globalization, Adjustment, and Employment Drivers

This study is a comparative analysis of the relative performance of two key industries in the Philippines during the period when the country liberalized trade. These industries are (1) the textile and garments industry and (2) the information and communications technology (ICT)-based industries consisting of the electronics industry and the business process outsourcing (BPO) services sector

How Trade Liberalization and Labor Development Could Coincide in the Philippines

As the world adapts to the rapid pace of globalization in the 21st century, countries ease trade restrictions by gradually removing tariffs and non-tariff barriers to incentivize the free flow of goods across nations. This prevalence of trade liberalization policies propelled policymakers and economists to investigate the relationship between trade reforms and economic outcomes including wage inequality around the world. They found that trade liberalization, on average, has had a positive impact on economic growth, but prior studies that examine the effects of trade liberalization on wage inequality in developing countries have found mixed results. Recently, Murakami (2021) examined the impact of trade liberalization on wage inequality in Chile through the reduction in effective tariffs brought about by the regional trade agreements of the country. Following his empirical strategy, we examine the impact of trade liberalization on wage inequality in the Philippines. In this policy brief, we provide insights on our findings and policy recommendations that the Philippines can undertak

The Effect of Conditional Cash Transfers on the Prepaid and Postpaid Expenditures of Internet and Cellular Services: The Case of Filipino Households

Technology has been playing a large role in the lives of households regardless of income. How, then, do poor families value the importance of internet and cellular services due to the existence of outcome-improving or outcome-worsening effects associated with these services? At the same time, since the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) substantially affects its beneficiaries’ household expenditures, assessing its effectiveness concerning its objectives is important. Most literature on how poor households spend their cash transfers is centered on directly linked goods such as health and education. However, the relationship between CCTs and expenditures on goods that play a more indirect yet increasing role in the lives of poor households (e.g., internet and cellular services) has yet to be explored. Using the 2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) with the 4Ps program serving as the treatment, a propensity score matching methodology is applied to compare beneficiaries’ expenditures on prepaid and postpaid internet and cellular services with non-beneficiaries via Average Treatment Effects on the Treated (ATT)

Globalization, adjustment, and employment drivers

This study is a comparative analysis of the relative performance of two key industries in the Philippines during the period when the country liberalized trade: the textile and garments industry, and information and communications technology (ICT)-based industries, consisting of the electronics industry and the business process outsourcing (BPO) services sector. The study aims to account for the factors that affected the differential performance of these industries, their efforts to upgrade in the face of stronger competition, and the implications of these efforts as drivers of employment