Public finance in the Philippines: A review of the literature

It is the objective of this paper to take the initial step in bridging the gap between public finance and policy making in the Philippines by reviewing the existing literature on this subject. For purposes of the paper the field of public finance was divided into four areas: (1) taxation, (2) government expenditures, (3) the budget process and (4) public debt. A historical perspective of each of these sub-topics is presented. In addition, the various research and policy issues related to each of the said sub-topics are discussed and synthesized. Among others, these issues include: (1) the tax effort, (2) allocative effects of taxation, (3) taxation and inflation, (4) fiscal incidence, (5) the budget process and economic development and (6) the optimal level of debt. The paper observes that taxation attracted the greatest amount of interest and work effort in the area of public finance while the budget process and public debt are the least explored topics. The paper also notes that the bulk of the research work was conducted in the period of the sixties. In the 1970s interest in the field appeared to be on the wane.