Twin Plagues: How Duterte and Covid-19 Wrecked the Philippine Economy chronicles the Philippine economy under Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency from 2016 to 2022, a period marked by authoritarian populism and the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on economic data, policy analysis, and contemporary reporting, the book argues that weak governance and institutional erosion had already undermined economic performance well before the pandemic. The pandemic then exposed and magnified these failures, culminating in the country’s worst postwar recession and the deepest economic contraction in Southeast Asia. The book challenges the persistent but misleading narrative that Duterte handled the economy well, offering an economic counterpoint to a literature that has largely emphasized the war on drugs, media repression, and foreign policy. Written in an accessible style, Twin Plagues is both an economic history and a cautionary tale about how authoritarian populism can rapidly corrode governance and inflict lasting damage on developing economies.

JC Punongbayan is Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE). He earned his PhD in Economics from the UPSE in 2021, where he also graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian in 2009 and was awarded the José Encarnación Jr. Award for Excellence in Economics and the Gerardo P. Sicat Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis. He writes a weekly economics column for Rappler. He was named one of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for 2023 by JCI Philippines and the TOYM Foundation. His first book, False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them, was published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2023.