Has Land Reform Improved on Landownership Inequality? Evidence from Philippine Rice-growing Villages

Has land ownership distribution in the Philippines improved as a result of the land reform program instituted in the country? Not quite, this Policy Notes asserts. Find out why...land reform, land ownership concentration, land ownership consolidation

Property Rights in Land Reform Areas

"Land to tiller" has been the rallying slogan of the land reform program in the Philippines, with improvements in income and productivity in the agrarian sector expected to be realized. However, even if some equalization of incomes may have indeed occurred, the full benefits of the asset transfer have not been realized. Why? This Policy Notes suggests that the reason might be due to the fact that ill-defined land rights brought about by regulatory and bureaucratic impediments have rendered such lands as practically "dead capital/asset." The roots of this property rights problem are traced in this paper.land use planning, property rights, land redistribution program, land reform

A local ergodic theorem for non-uniformly hyperbolic symplectic maps with singularities

In this paper, we prove a criterion for the local ergodicity of non-uniformly hyperbolic symplectic maps with singularities. Our result is an extension of a theorem of Liverani and Wojtkowski.Comment: 35 page

A Second Look at Institutional Reforms in the Housing Sector

Despite the long list of policy instruments adopted by the Philippine government through the years to improve the country's housing situation, very little improvement has been observed in the housing condition in the Philippines. Why? In this Policy Notes, Ballesteros argues that it is because the government response has not truly addressed the concerns that give rise to the housing dilemma.housing sector, institutional reforms

Benefits (and Losses) from Rent Control in the Philippines: An Empirical Study of Metro Manila

This study examines benefits (and losses) from the rent control law in Metro Manila. The results show that net benefits from rent control are positive and targets mainly the poor families. However, benefits have negligible effects on income. They also tend to be eroded by the regressive effects of rent control on supply of rental housing, in particular, the strict eviction provisions of the law. Stiff competition for low-priced rental housing, low quality of housing for the poor, higher rents for the uncontrolled sector, and misallocation of resources are the possible effects of rent control on housing. It is recommended that government find other alternative schemes to the rent control law. Possible schemes include the provision of rental allowances to the poor; provision of low-cost financing to landlords, including those who are into self-help housing; and rent of government land on leasehold basis to developers interested to go into rental housing.rent control, rental housing market

Business models for industrial symbiosis: A guide for firms

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a collaborative approach concerning physical exchange of materials, energy, and services among different firms: accordingly, wastes produced by a given firm are exploited as inputs by other firms. This approach is able to generate economic and environmental benefits at the same time, the former for the involved firms and the latter for the collectivity as a whole. For these reasons, the implementation of IS is largely recommended. However, despite its huge potentialities, the IS approach seems to be actually underdeveloped and not fully exploited. Firms without any prior experience of IS exchanges suffer from lack of awareness about how to integrate the IS practice into their current business models and how to gain economic benefits from IS. Since the willingness to obtain economic benefits is the main driver pushing firms to implement the IS practice, this issue constitutes an important barrier to the development of new IS relationships. In this paper, we contribute to this issue by identifying the different business models that each firm can adopt to implement the IS approach. In particular, we identify several business models for both firms producing waste and firms requiring waste. For each model, we highlight how firms can create and get economic value from IS. Moreover, from the interaction among firms, each of them implementing its own business model, several business scenarios at inter-firm level can arise. These scenarios are also presented: for each of them, strengths and weaknesses are identified and a short case study is discussed. The identified models can be useful at the company level since they provide indications about how to integrate the IS approach within their current business model