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As part of its global obligations to responding to climate change, the Philippines is committed to limiting future emissions growth through policy interventions such as funding research on mitigation and direct regulation of energy efficiency requirements. The Philippines is also interested in extensions of such policies, including the use of carbon taxes, measures to enhance energy efficiency, and changes to the country’s electricity generation mix. This paper develops a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Philippine economy to analyse the effects of such climate change policy options in the period to 2020. The modelling results indicate that given the current level of development in the Philippine electricity generation and transport sectors, even relatively modest measures have marked impacts on emissions with marginal economic impacts. A carbon tax of $US5 per a tonne, results in a 9.8% reduction in emissions and a 0.5% reduction in GDP from baseline levels to 2020. Similarly, a 2% increase in energy efficiency throughout the Philippine economy results in an 8.5% reduction in emissions and 0.6% reduction in GDP compared to the underlying baseline of no policy response. Finally, a 10% shift in the coal-fired generation capacity results in an 11.0% reduction in emissions with GDP in fact increasing by 1.9% over baseline levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Philippine government intervenes in the domestic rice market through the imposition of import tariffs and the provision of producer and consumer subsidies. While policymakers are aware that these programmes come with allocative efficiency costs, they justify the programmes on the grounds that they insulate the domestic economy from unexpected price spikes in the international rice market. An interesting matter for policy evaluation is to quantify the insulation benefit that the programmes provide in circumstances of sudden severe import price spikes. To examine this question, we undertake a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation in which the Philippines is subject to an external rice price shock. We find that the insulation benefit of the support programmes under a 2008-like event is worth approximately 0.10% of real consumption. However, the cost of insuring against these price spikes is significant. We estimate the annual cost of the rice market interventions at approximately 0.40% of real consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]