At head of title: "The book on economic development = Ang aklat sa kaunlarang pang-ekonomiya" -- Cover

Includes bibliography (pages [561]-597).

"Economic development has been described as process of self-discovery and learning by doing. Every developing country must learn for itself not only which products to produce and how to produce them but also which social and economic policies and programs work and which don't - and the reasons for their success or failure. Since the Philippine economy has performed poorly relative to the economies of other countries in East and Southeast Asia, it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that Filipinos did not understand the functioning of market economies. However, while faulty economics sometimes resulted in wrong policy prescriptions (e.g the presumption that government can help the poor by selling food at low prices to consumers and supporting high prices for farmers), more often than not, the reason economic policies failed to achieve their desired goals or objectives was not the inability to judge which markets were functioning and which were not, but the misplaced optimism that government intervention will address market failures effectively and not waste resources and create perverse incentives." - Provided by publisher.

Text in Filipino and English