On the afternoon of March 20, 2024, the Institute for International and Area Studies of Tsinghua University invited Professor Philip Arnold P. Tuaño, former president of the Philippine Economics Association and dean of the School of Government at Ateneo de Manila University, to give the third online lecture in the series of lectures on "Industrial Development and Value Chain Reconstruction in Southeast Asia under Great Changes", with the theme of "Structural Inequality, Economic Transformation and Current Challenges in the Philippines". The lecture was hosted by Qin Beichen, a doctoral student at the Institute for International and Area Studies of Tsinghua University, and discussed with Fernando Aldaba, former dean of the School of Social Sciences and professor of economics at Ateneo de Manila University, and Joselito T. Sescon, deputy director of the Institute of Philippine Culture. Nearly 100 teachers and students from domestic and foreign universities and professionals interested in the topic attended the lecture.
In his lecture, Professor Tuaño compared the economic growth, socioeconomic mobility and wealth inequality in the Philippines before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and explored the deep-seated causes of structural inequality in the Philippine economy, such as trade structure, electoral politics, and the weakening of the state as a development/regulatory role. Subsequently, Professor Tuaño expressed his views on the government characteristics of the Philippines' "redistribution plan" and the role of different government policies in the process of economic development in the Philippines. Finally, the two panelists had a rich discussion on topics such as cooperation between China and the Philippines in the value chain, future trends in industrial migration, and the Philippine labor market.
Philip Arnold P. Tuaño is the former president of the Philippine Economics Association and the dean of the School of Government at Ateneo de Manila University. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of the Philippines, and his research interests include economic inequality, industrial development, ASEAN trade, and the economics of natural disasters. He was the dean of the Department of Economics at Ateneo de Manila University and served on the National Poverty Alleviation Commission of the Philippines. He has won the World Bank-Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Young Researcher Award.
Editor: Changhan Cao
Proofreader: Southeast Asian Studies group
