PANEL 1
Pro-Competition Policy in the Face of Slowing Globalization and Creeping Protectionism
Prema-chandra Athukorala
 Prema-chandra Athukorala is Professor of Economics in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Australian National University (ANU), Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Mancester, UK. His research interests are primarily in the fields of development macroeconomics, international trade and development, multinational enterprises and foreign direct investment, and international labour migration. His publications include 117 papers in scholarly journals, 10 books, 7 edited books and 75 chapters in multi-author books. He has served, at various times, as a consultant to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Asian Development Bank Institute, International labour Organisation, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, World Trade Organization, United Nations International Trade Centre, and the Australian Agency for International Development. These assignments have resulted in work on Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand Vietnam, Mongolia and Kyrgyz Republic. Emmanuel Esguerra
 Emmanuel F. Esguerra is currently Professorial Lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman. A member of the UP School of Economics faculty from 1993 to 2018, he was seconded to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in July 2012 where he served as Deputy Director-General heading the National Development Office for Policy and Planning, and subsequently in 2016 as Director-General and Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of the Philippines and his PhD at the Ohio State University. His areas of research interest include labor economics, public economics and development economics. Kodrat Wibowo
 Kodrat Wibowo, SE, Ph.D is the Chairman of the Indonesia Competition Commission (ICC) for the 2020-2023 period. He started his career at the Economics Department, University of Oklahoma, the United States of America, as a Researcher and Teaching Assistant in 1998. He came back to Indonesia and continued his career at Padjadjaran University where he worked at the Center for Economics and Development Studies (CEDS) of the Faculty of Economics and Business of Padjadjaran University as a Secretary. He attained his bachelor’s degree education from Padjadjaran University majoring in Economics and Development Studies in 1994. He then continued his doctoral education at the Economics Department College of Arts and Science, University of Oklahoma in 1997. He also once served as the Vice Chairman of the Audit Committee, Board of Trustees of Padjadjaran University and held such position since 2016. Suthad Setboonsarng
 Suthad Setboonsarng is an economist currently serving as a member of the Bank of Thailand Board, the central bank of Thailand, an Independent Director, Board of Directors, Banpu PLC, one of the largest private energy companies in Thailand. He is also a board member of the Cambodia Development Research Institute (CDRI). Dr. Setboonsarng received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the Thammasat University, Thailand, and his Master of Arts degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Hawaii. He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Hawaii under a scholarship from the East-West Center, Hawaii. Dr. Setboonsarng’s prior experiences include being a member of the National Reform Council of Thailand; Thailand trade representative (a ministerial representative of the Thai Prime Minister), Thailand; partner, Worldtrade Management Services, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Thailand; deputy secretary general of the ASEAN Secretariat, Indonesia; associate professor, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Pathumthani, Thailand; research fellow, Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI); research fellow, East-West Resource System Institute, Hawaii, USA; and lecturer, Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University, Thailand. His selected publications deal with international trade and investment, rice policies, rice research priorities, and agricultural pricing. Stella Luz Quimbo
 Stella Luz A. Quimbo is the duly elected Representative of the 2nd District of Marikina City and Deputy Minority Leader of the 18th Philippine Congress. She is an academician who served as Professor and Department Chair of the University of the Philippines School of Economics. In 2016, she was appointed Commissioner of the Philippine Competition Commission, where she served for three years. From 2011 to 2013, she was a Prince Claus Professorial Chair Holder at Erasmus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Dr. Quimbo has an extensive research portfolio in the field of Health Economics, Industrial Organization, Microeconomics, Education, Poverty, and Public Policy and Regulation. This includes her attendance in a succession of both international and local academic conferences, and authorship of numerous scientific and technical publications, one of which was acclaimed 2015 Outstanding Scientific Paper Awardee by The National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). Later, NAST also conferred on her the Outstanding Youth Scientist Award. She was also a Freedom Flame Awardee of a German foundation for liberal politics, the Friedrich Neumann Foundation for Freedom, and a recipient of the UP President Edgardo J. Angara Fellowship and UP Diliman Centennial Faculty Grant. She holds an MA in Economics for Competition Policy (with Distinction) from King’s College London. She obtained her BS in Economics (summa cum laude), MA in Economics, and PhD in Economics from the University of the Philippines. Corazon PB Claudio
 Dr. Claudio’s education and professional activities cover general management; science and technology (S&T), with focus on engineering-economic systems and decision/risk analysis; environment, climate change, and sustainable development; information, education, & communication (IEC) & IC technology (ICT). She has worked in the following industries/areas: environment and natural resources; energy; S&T education and promotion; journalism-various media; IEC & ICT, including telecommunications; insurance; retail; and population, health, and wellness management. Her work has involved setting up and managing social enterprises (for-profit, non-profit, & public sector organizations), holding senior executive positions in the public and private sectors, and serving as senior scientist/adviser/consultant in programs covering the ASEAN, Asia-Pacific region, and South America-South Asia. She currently serves as Adviser or Board Trustee/Director of several public and private organizations. Dr. Claudio holds the following degrees: B.S. Ch.E. (FEATI University), MBA (Ateneo de Manila University), International Teachers’ Programme (ITP) Certificate for teaching management (Harvard University & Consortium of Management Schools in Europe), M.S. & Ph.D., Engineering-Economic Systems (Stanford University). Her Philippine honors and awards include: TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service), Balik Scientist, and Recognition by the Philippines’ Professional Regulatory Board of Chemical Engineers. Growing up in a rural community, getting advanced education in the Philippines, United States, and Europe, and gaining professional experience and recognition locally and internationally, she “can navigate in any sector of society, whether poor or rich,” as one business leader commented. |
PANEL 2
The Health Sector and Competition Amidst the Pandemic
Marcus Bezzi
 Marcus has been an Executive General Manager at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) since early 2009. He is responsible for the ACCC’s Specialized Enforcement & Advocacy Division; this division enforces cartel laws, manages the ACCC’s International engagement, coordinates the ACCC advocacy network and runs the ACCC intelligence unit. It also has responsibility for the ACCC’s work in units established to focus on substantial lessening of competition, agriculture, commercial construction and financial services. Marcus has a background as a government and private sector lawyer. He was General Counsel at the ACMA for three years and a Senior Executive Lawyer at the Australian Government Solicitor for ten years.
Calla Wiemer
 Calla Wiemer is President of the American Committee on Asian Economic Studies and Moderator of the Asia Economics Blog. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Economics from 2015 to 2020. Her teaching career has extended to the University of the Philippines School of Economics, the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, the National University of Singapore, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Claremont McKenna College, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is currently writing a textbook titled “Macroeconomics for Emerging East Asia”. The book was born of recognition that external balance and debt sustainability are critical concerns for the economies of the region whereas these topics get scant attention in standard US macro texts. At the outset, the book lays foundations in the balance of payments and exchange rates, then approaches monetary policy with an eye to the interaction between the interest rate and the exchange rate as policy instruments and fiscal policy with attention to debt loads and fiscal space. A US citizen, Calla became a China specialist with dissertation research at Nanjing University in 1981-82 for a PhD in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She expanded her purview to the rest of Asia when she found herself blacklisted by China in 2003 for work on the Xinjiang region. Since 2015, Calla has made her home in the Philippines where she enjoys the country’s great beauty through biking and hiking and loves the year-round swimming. Jaime Montoya
 Highly trained and multi-awarded Infectious Disease Specialist with M.Sc. and Diploma in Clinical Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, U.K. and certified by both the Royal College of Physicians, London, U.K. and the Philippine Board of Internal Medicine and the Philippine Board of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases ,MSc in Bioethics from the University of the Philippines Manila College of Medicine and PhD in Medicine from the Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. He is a Fellow of the Philippine College of Physicians, Fellow of the Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Fellow of the American College of Physicians and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Thailand. He is currently Professor at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, Chair of the Health Sciences Division and Secretary, National Academy of Science and Technology and the Executive Director of the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development, Department of Science and Technology. He is currently also the President of the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology (PhilAAST). He is also currently a member of the Board of Advisers of the ASEAN Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation. Last October 2020, he was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of the 15 eminent scientists to draft the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report. The designation followed an extensive consultation process that involved nominations from UN member states which concluded in December 2019. The SDG report which is produced once every four years will feed the ‘high-level global review’ of the 2030 Agenda at the United Nations in September 2030, as well as to guide national and international policymakers on the state of global sustainable development. Beaver Tamesis
 Beaver is the President and Managing Director for MSD in the Philippines. Beaver is a cardiologist by training. He joined MSD in the Philippines in 1995 as Medical Director. He then switched to the commercial side, serving as Business Unit Director for the portfolios of Cardiovascular Metabolic, Bone and Joint, Specialty and Market Access. Beaver also held positions for the Asia Pacific region – as Regional Marketing Director and Acting Country Manager of MSD Vietnam. He assumed country leadership of MSD in the Philippines in 2013. Beaver received his medical degree from the University of the Philippines, completing his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Cardiology at the Philippines General Hospital and a research fellowship at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. He is widely published in the areas of stress testing, nuclear imaging and structured treatment approaches for diabetes mellitus. Beaver is currently serving his sixth term as President of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), representing the research-based providers of life-saving medicines and vaccines in the country. Marjorie Pajaron
 Marjorie Pajaron is currently an independent researcher and affiliated with the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Prior to her appointment, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia- Pacific Research Center from 2012–2013. She also served as a lecturer at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Department of Economics where she also received her PhD in Economics. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, Global Development Institute in 2017. Her research lies at the intersection of applied microeconometrics, health, labor, gender and development economics. She has published her works on international migration, weather shocks and risk-sharing in high-ranking ISI- listed international journals such as the Journal of Population Economics and Journal of Development Studies, among others. Her other research papers on labor, health and environmental economics are included as working and discussion papers at Stanford University Asia Health Policy Program Working Paper series (AHPP WP) and Global Labor Organization Discussion Paper series (GLO DP). |
PANEL 3
Big Tech in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Equalizer or Amplifier?
Thomas Cheng
 Thomas Cheng is an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong. He has written extensively on competition law in developing countries and on the competition law of a number of Asian jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, China, and Japan. His research has appeared in respected specialist U.S. journals, including Chicago Journal of International Law, Berkeley Business Law Journal, Virginia Law & Business Review, and University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and in leading competition law journals such as Journal of Antitrust Enforcement and World Competition. In 2020, he published Competition Law in Developing Countries, the first comprehensive monograph on the topic, with Oxford University Press. He will publish The Patent-Competition Interface in Developing Countries, again the first comprehensive monograph on the topic, with Oxford University Press in 2021. His research has been recognized internationally. He has been twice awarded the Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award in the vertical restraints and antitrust and IP categories. Apart from awards, his stature as a scholar has been recognized through appointments to the executive and advisory boards of a number of leading international competition law organizations such as the American Antitrust Institute and the Academic Society for Competition Law (“ASCOLA”). He has made critical contributions to the development of competition law in Hong Kong. He advised the government extensively during the drafting of the city’s first competition law. He was a member of the inaugural Competition Commission and played a pivotal role in staff recruitment and setting up the Commission. Johannes Benjamin Bernabe
 Commissioner Bernabe served as a Senior Fellow at the Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, where he specialized in formulating and analyzing policy reforms to the international trade system. He has broad experience in trade regulation and economic law. He graduated cum laude with a degree in economics and subsequently a law degree at the University of the Philippines. He took up further studies in law at the University of London and the International Development Law Institute in Sydney, Australia. Amabelle Asuncion
 Commissioner Amabelle C. Asuncion has extensive experience in both commercial and corporate practice within the context of private and public sector issues. She had engagements in different business sectors, and worked on various regulatory compliance and policy reform initiatives She served in various capacities, including as advocacy adviser, director for legal and regulatory affairs, legislative officer, adjudication chief, and law professor. She received her law degree from the University of the Philippines and her Master of Laws with distinction from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. Rafaelita Aldaba
 Dr. Rafaelita “Fita” M. Aldaba is Undersecretary for Competitiveness and Innovation of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Philippine Board of Investments (BOI). She is responsible for the DTI’s initiatives on innovation and entrepreneurship, startup ecosystem development, national competitiveness, accreditation of conformity assessment bodies, and trade and industrial policy research. Prior to her appointment in government, Dr. Aldaba served as Senior Research Fellow and Acting Vice President of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). She has extensive research experience and authored various publications on development issues in the Philippines and ASEAN. She has also conceptualized and managed research projects with various international organizations, including The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the United States Agency for International Development. Ana Pascual
 Ana is GCash’s Vice President for Key Merchant Accounts and Acquirers. As head of this department, Ana handles the Business Development and Account management of the top companies that drive the payments business of GCash. She led the team that launched QR payments in October 2017 at the Ayala Malls with 60 merchants and have since managed QR as a product and grown the business to more than 80K merchant doors and with triple the volume in 2020 and 45% penetration in all the major malls in the Philippines. She has pushed continuous product improvements in offline QR payments from introducing cashbacks, then shifting voucher acceptance and launching device based acceptance and direct POS integration with key accounts key accounts in the supermarket, retail and Food space. She has now also been untrusted in growing the business in the MSME space and bringing the GCash payment solutions to a wider base of merchants and supporting the small business owner to digitize their solutions. Before joining GCash, Ana has had varied experience in different fields, from management consulting specializing in organizational development and crisis management, media sales outside the Philippines and Fashion design with her own atelier. This background married with her Bachelor’s degree in Electricial Engineering and Computer Science from Jacobs University in Germany has helped her provide comprehensive solutions for the GCash merchants. Christopher Monterola
 Dr. Monterola is a physicist, an educator, and an entrepreneur. He holds an Aboitiz Chair in Data Science and a Professorship at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) where he is also the Head of the Aboitiz School of Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (ASITE). Prior to joining AIM, Dr. Monterola was a Senior Scientist at the Institute of High Performance Computing in the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) — Singapore’s lead government agency for fostering world-class scientific research. He was the Capability Group Manager (CGM) of the Complex Systems (CxSy) Capability Group at the IHPC. Chris was also the Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of the Complexity Science Programme (CSP) of the IHPC under the CxSy. The CSP was one of the programs under a bigger umbrella that is the A*STAR Urban Systems Initiative. Prior to his stint in Singapore, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. He obtained a Ph.D. in Physics in 2002 from the National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) where he was an Associate Professor 7. He was also the Coordinator of the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory (IPL), a leading physics research group in the Philippines. Dr. Monterola was elected to the National Academy of Science and Technology, Philippines (NAST PHL) in 2020. |
