DSGE policy tool adapted by Bangko Sentral yields biased insights 340.0
DSGE is the newest type of policy analysis tool adapted by the Bangko Sentral(BSP). It complements the existing set of econometric models it uses as aids in policy making, particularly inflation targeting. Its quite-a-mouthful and technical long name is Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium. As with the Corden and Neary framework that BSP analysts used in [...]
Economic Change Must be Structural to Go Beyond Trickle Down Effects 319.0
Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima listed the “structural” reforms in the Aquino Administration’s program for economic change in a recent BusinessWorld Online article, Gov’t sets higher growth target for 2012, on June 18, 2011: The government has to pursue structural adjustments — investments in infrastructure, reforms to boost competitiveness and simplified regulations to reach the realistic [...]
Social Innovation in Campaign Finance to Boost the Art of Associating 313.0
Quietly, many groups are working for better political institutions like campaign finance and program-based political parties as social innovations in the Philippines. I attended a high-powered symposium yesterday – except for the absence of representatives from the key constituency of political parties – on Increasing Transparency in Campaign Finance. Symposiums like these are done to [...]
Adapting from Google Wallet e-Settlement for the Philippines market 312.0
Google Wallet represents the latest innovative convergence of technologies to improve convenience in electronic settlement. Electronic settlement is one of three necessary legs to complete the chain of e-commerce. The other two are (a) the marketplace where the buy-and-sell transaction takes place and (b) fulfillment that takes care of the delivery leg of what was [...]
Industrial Policy Wears Many Guises in America from Alexander Hamilton 308.0
Industrial Policy has been equated with Socialism in America from the middle off the 20th century. As an epithet hurled at President Obama typically by tea party members, Socialism is taken today as a term of abuse. Industrial policy has become a cliché where mere mention is often followed by outright rejection. In today’s cluttered [...]
Friedrich Hayek was Wrong on the Inevitability of Planning 306.0
Friedrich Hayek must be twirling in his grave. Like many classical thinkers, his ideas have been selectively harvested to support ideological causes that, as an academic, he would not probably agree with today. Friedrich Hayek was the 1974 Nobel Laureate for economics specifically on his “penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional [...]
Manufacturing-Enterprise Resource Planning Enables Plant Productivity 304.0
Implementing the right factory software information systems (ICT) enables productivity for manufacturing firms. ICT is a general purpose technology that, when applied correctly, has been proven to improve productivity. ICT in manufacturing increases productivity in three ways, first by institutionalizing business processes, second by improving coordination among factory functions, and, finally, by hard-wiring empowerment for [...]
Postwar Japan Created Modern Industrial Policy and Innovation Systems 302.0
From reading the news everyday, our instinct is to mistrust government as innately corrupt and inept in delivering welfare. Postwar Japan proved otherwise in reviving the country while creating and then using modern industrial policy and innovation systems to facilitate its dizzying growth rate from 1950 to 1972. Our neighbors South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and [...]
Planning as Mixed Economy is Best for Emerging Markets and Philippines 300.0
The 2010-2016 Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) was accepted “in principle” by the Cabinet-level NEDA Board chaired by President Benigno S. C. Aquino III on April 28, 2011 reported the BWOnline. (BusinessWorld, 2011) This was after a seven-month long process – three months longer than planned – from September 2, 2010. I was extremely pleased [...]
Modern Industrial Policy Discovers Locomotives in Global Supply Chains 297.0
Modern versions of industrial policy and the broader field of development economics are coming back into center stage says Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz in an IMF blog. This renewal comes after the failure of neoclassical macroeconomics to forecast the recent financial crisis and to explain the continuing success of emerging markets like China and India [...]
Appropriate Technology by Jim Ayala and HYBRID Empowers the Poor 292.0
Bringing appropriate technology and empowering the poor is Jim Ayala’s passion. He set up HYBRID Social Solutions as a “for profit” social enterprise. It is the pioneer social distribution company in the Philippines, to empower the poor by giving access to appropriate technology. The innovative concept of social distribution builds on an insightful view of [...]
Proof of Kondratieff Waves by Spectral Analysis Cuts Business Risk?
In 2010, researchers using spectral analysis published a paper that claims significant statistical proof that Kondratieff Waves exist and that its period is 52-53 years. This proof supports Nikolai Kondratieff’s predictions first presented in 1925 that Joseph Schumpeter also studied in his 1939 book Business Cycles. Further, this proof raises some rhetorical questions like: [...]
