The structure of employment and structural adjustment in the Philippines

Joseph Anthony Lim and Manuel Montes

Journal of Development Studies, 2000, vol. 36, issue 4, 149-181

Abstract: Growth in the 1970s seemed, at that time, to have brought the Philippines to a rather high equilibrium growth path. But the foreign debt and political crisis in the early and mid-1980s had brought the economy down to a lower equilibrium path. The recovery years (1987 to 1990) did not prove to be sustainable, given the extreme debt overhang, so that the economy retreated once again to the lower equilibrium path in the early 1990s. Significant debt reduction schemes and the new inflows (remittances of overseas workers and rising foreign investments) allowed a new growth trend. Whether sufficient growth can be maintained in the medium and long term will depend to a large part on uncontrollable external conditions. Significant improvements in trade and industrial policies are needed so that external deficits and imports will finance those sectors that allow for creation of high quality employment. Policy will have to shift resources away from the trade, real estate and other service sectors to strong tradeable manufactures. If the Philippines cannot get out of the boom—bust cycle, labour productivity in the medium and long term will stagnate and the share of those employed in the total labour force will remain stable, leading to stagnating employment opportunities and worsening income distribution.

Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220380008422641 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:36:y:2000:i:4:p:149-181

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220380008422641

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().