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This article introduces the moral philosophy underlying Smith's contributions to economics and emphasises the close connection between Smith's two principal works, the Theory of moral sentiments and the Wealth of nations.

Secular morality is implied in the University's very founding, with roots dating back to the 18th century Enlightenment that informed both the defeated Philippine revolution and the political ideas of the American occupiers. Citing recent knowledge gained from behavioural games and evolutionary psychology, this paper discusses how a public morality that is secular, minimal, and libertarian, is both possible and desirable in a complex society. The paper then illustrates how such a morality can inform politics and public policy in such difficult issues as illegal gambling, contraception and abortion, and living-organ donation. The state university's role in developing and strengthening the idea of secular morality is then discussed.

Dr. Ochangco's book, based on his doctoral dissertation (1996, New School University), is to date still the only internationally recognized work by a Filipino in the field of economic methodology, an important area in economics representing an application of the philosophy of science to economics, typically utilizing parts of the history of economic thought as material. The author's overlapping competencies (in both economics and philosophy) place him in a favored position to work in a difficult field where only few practicing economists feel themselves qualified.

The government is rightly concerned with employment generation to make growth inclusive. The use of the open unemployment rate to measure its success, however, is misplaced. In a developing country with a large informal sector and in the absence of unemployment insurance, open unemployment is primarily a middle-class phenomenon: the unemployed are not predominantly poor, and the poor are not predominantly unemployed. Measures of productivity and shifts of labour across sectors may contain more information.

Recent work has documented industrial output growth around the poor periphery from 1870 to the present, finding unconditional convergence on the leaders long before the modern BRICS and even before the Asian Tigers. The Philippines was very much part of that catching up. In the decade or so up to 1913, Philippine industrial output grew at 6.3 percent per annum, way above that achieved by the industrial leaders. Indeed, the Philippines was the third Asian country to enter the 5% industrial growth club: Japan 1899, China 1900, the Philippines 1913, Taiwan 1914, Korea 1921, and India 1929. The Philippines continued its industrial catch up during the interwar years 1920-1938, as it did during the ISI years 1950-1972. While the Philippines conformed to the world-wide unconditional industrial convergence pattern for seven decades, it began to deviate from the pack in the 1980s, leaving the industrial catching up club in 1982, never to re-enter. What were the causes of this regime switch? Was it political instability at a critical time in the 1980s? Was it a subsequent failure to exploit the move of Japanese manufacturing FDI into the region? Was it an institutional weakness benign in the pre-1982 past but made more powerful since? Was it some liberal policy package that penalized manufacturing when it was already on the ropes? Was it a labor emigration surge in the 1980s that stripped the work force of industrial skills? Was it some massive Dutch Disease created by subsequent huge emigrant remittances? Given the initial political shock, all of these negative forces had their influence in the form of a 'perfect de-industrializing storm'.

inequality and that our country is poor, this article analyzes the policy of President Corazon Aquino in relation to addressing our country's maldistribution problem and economic growth. Although much of what has transpired in recent years resulted into a modest economic growth rate of 6.7% in 1988, most of the components of this growth are conjunctural (fleeting) as opposed to a structural economic development (one that is lasting). An analysis on the sources of recent growth revealed that growth was induced by consumption expansion due mainly on pay increases and bonuses to government employees; increase in government spending which resulted to a higher debt stock and increase in deficit; increases in investment which is not necessarily translated into increases in productive capacity to meet any rising demand; and external factors. Our country generated economic development mostly from external factors such as loans, official assistance etc. this phenomenon created a lack of internal dynamism in our economy needed for us to recover faster. This paper also found out that employment and maldistribution of resources are not given substantial priority. In the final analysis, the paper concludes that much is still needed to be done in order for us to have a growth that will help uplift our country's standing in the international arena.

The National Broadband Network (NBN) project and the Cyber Education Project (CEP) are state-initiated programs originally conceived to provide last-mile connectivity and interoperability to all government offices and all public schools, respectively. The backbone service required for this was to be procured from the private sector either from extant backbones or via BOT. When the soft loans from China became available, these two programs became scaled up to include two government-owned backbones. We examine the possible economic rationales for a government backbone and found the scaled-up NBN and CEP severely wanting. The prior question we address is: Does the Philippines need a government-owned backbone? Our answer is: No.

This paper discusses the causes and consequences of the current trend in which a principal driver of growth is inward remittances by workers deployed overseas. The main benefit of the phenomenon is an easing of the fiscal burden arising from the effectively large transfer from workers to the government. On the other hand, the "Dutch Disease" it causes takes a longterm toll on the tradables sector. The paper concludes that the fiscal payoffs from the phenomenon are best used by reinvesting these in the foundations of domestic competitiveness - particularly education and focused infrastructure - to offset the worst effects of the trend and prepare prudently for the time it ends or reverses.

The effect of the performance of the judicial system has been thrown into the limelight as the business sector has in various surveys pointed to its performance as being one of the main obstacles and disincentives to doing business in the Philippines. The channels through which judicial decisions may affect business behaviour are fairly straightforward and may be reduced to two: increased uncertainty and high costs. In order to quantify the perceived effect of the workings of the judiciary on the various economic decisions and on investment in general, a survey of 320 of the top 7000 corporations in the Philippines was conducted in 2001. Our findings show that governance problems are at least as important as economic or financial problems in doing business. Only weak market demand was cited as being more important than corruption, high crime levels, and lack of trust in government laws and policies as important obstacles to doing business. Of more direct relevance to the judiciary, difficulties in settling legal conflicts were the sixth most frequently cited factor affecting business, after high power costs but even more important than poor physical infrastructure and access to credit. Further, the current level of functioning of the legal system has an economic impact equivalent to foregoing at least 6-11 percent of total investment in the economy and foregoing at least one-fourth to onehalf of a percentage point (0.25-0.46) of GDP growth annually, or an annual loss amounting to between P7 billion and P13 billion in 1999 alone. These are significant and recurring economic losses attributable to the nature and functioning of institutions and form a strong case for judicial reform.

Debates on the revision of the value-added tax (VAT) are about to reach the penultimate stage. Once house and senate have passed their respective versions of the bill, congress - through a bicameral conference committee sometimes referred to as the 'third chamber' - must then agree on the final form of the law. After all the media-posturing, the politicking, and horse-trading have subsided, politicians of both chambers are still left to confront the nation's true interests - and their own consciences. It is vital that they finally pass a law that is right in form and adequate to the economy's needs.