This study aims to investigate the effects of restrictions in economic activity on the spread of COVID-19 in the Philippines. This research employs daily time-series data of confirmed new COVID-19 cases, Apple mobility trends (i.e., use of public transport to destinations, volume of people driving, and amount of walking to destinations) and Google community mobility (i.e., visits to transit stations, visits to workplaces, and staying-at-home) indicators covering the period February 17 to September 11, 2020. The analysis starts by establishing the correlation pattern of new confirmed COVID-19 daily infections to each independent variable. The results show negative linear correlation of the number of new COVID-19 daily infections with less visit to transit station, increase stay-at-home, less use of public transport, and less amount of walking to destinations. Interestingly, the number of new COVID-19 daily infections indicates some form of positive linear correlation with visits to workplaces and volume of people driving. Moreover, employing robust least square regression via the method of MM-estimation, major findings reveal that across mobility measures, staying-at-home has the highest impact on reducing the spread of COVID-19, followed by visiting transit stations less, less use of public transport, less amount of walking, and less workplace visits.

This paper examines the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the Philippine stock exchange, peso-dollar rate and retail price of diesel using robust least squares regression and vector autoregression (VAR). The robust least squares regression using MM-estimation method concluded that COVID-19 daily infection has negative and statistically significant effect on the Philippine stock exchange index, pesodollar exchange rate and retail pump price of diesel. This is consistent with the results of correlation diagnostics. As for the VAR model, the lag values of the independent variable disclose significance in explaining the Philippine stock exchange index, peso-dollar exchange rate and retail pump price of diesel. Moreover, in the short run, the impulse response function confirmed relative effect of COVID-19 daily infections and the variance decomposition divulge that COVID-19 daily infections have accounted for only minor portion in explaining fluctuations of the Philippine stock exchange index, peso-dollar exchange and retail pump price of diesel. In the long term, the influence levels off. The Granger causality test suggests that COVID-19 daily infections cause changes in the Philippine stock exchange index and peso-dollar exchange rate in the short run. However, COVID-19 infection has no causal link with retail pump price of diesel.

The efficient market hypothesis explains the random walk hypothesis suggesting that stock prices are independent of each other, hence, it is impossible to earn abnormal profits. The positive effect of a well-functioning and highly efficient stock market on the performance of an economy motivated the Philippine Stock Exchange to pursue massive modernization initiatives. This research provides evidence of the existence of random walk in the Philippine stock market employing the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (1981) and Phillips-Perron (1988) unit root tests, the Lo-MacKinlay’s (1988) conventional variance ratio test, and Chow-Denning’s (1993) simple multiple variance ratio test. Results of the ADF and PP unit root tests confirm the necessary condition for a random walk. The Chow-Denning (1993) maximum /z/ statistic and the Wald test statistic as in Richardson and Smith (1991) for the joint hypotheses and the Lo and MacKinlay (1988) individual statistics variance ratio test generally accepted the null hypothesis of a random walk. That is, the unit root and variance ratio tests consistently indicate that the null hypothesis of random walk cannot be rejected. The existence of a random walk in weak-form efficiency can be attributed to market liquidity as a result of continuous development and modernization of the Philippine equity market.

This study estimates the nature of the relationship of entrepreneurship and business confidence on youth unemployment in the Philippines over the 2001-2017 period. The paper employed a range of cointegrating regression models, namely, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, Johansen-Juselius (JJ) and Engle-Granger (EG) cointegration models, dynamic OLS, fully modified OLS, and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) estimation techniques. The Granger causality based on error correction model (ECM) was also performed to determine the causal link of entrepreneurship and business confidence on youth unemployment. The ARDL bounds testing approach, Johansen-Juselius (JJ) and Engle-Granger (EG) cointegration models confirmed the existence of long-run equilibrium relationship of entrepreneurship and business confidence on youth unemployment. The long-run coefficients from JJ and dynamic OLS show significant long-run and positive relationship of entrepreneurship and business confidence on youth unemployment. While results of the long-run coefficients from fully modified OLS and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) found that only entrepreneurship has significant and positive relationship with youth unemployment in the long-run. The Granger causality based on error correction model (ECM) estimates show evidence of long-run causal relationship of entrepreneurship and business confidence on youth unemployment. In the short-run, increases in entrepreneurship and business confidence causes youth unemployment to decrease.

The paper examines the dynamic relationship of domestic credit and stock market liquidity on the economic growth of the Philippines from 1995 to 2018 applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration, together with Granger causality test based on vector error correction model (VECM). The ARDL model indicated a long-run relationship of domestic credit and stock market liquidity on GDP growth. When the GDP per capita is the dependent variable there is weak cointegration. Also, the Johansen cointegration test confirmed the existence of long-run relationship of domestic credit and stock market liquidity both on GDP growth and GDP per capita. The VECM concludes a long-run causality running from domestic credit and stock market liquidity to GDP growth. At levels, domestic credit has significant short-run causal relationship with GDP growth. As for stock market liquidity at first lag, has significant short-run causal relationship with GDP growth. With regards to VECM for GDP per capita, domestic credit and stock market liquidity indicates no significant dynamic adjustment to a new equilibrium if a disturbance occurs in the whole system. At levels, the results indicated the presence of short-run causality from stock market liquidity and GDP per capita. The CUSUMSQ plot complements the findings of the CUSUM plot that the estimated models for GDP growth and GDP per capita were stable.